2

RETURN TO FORTRESS EUROPE

The Big Shiny Prison (Volume III)
c/o Dr. Ryan Bartek

***Copyright © 2018 Ryan Bartek // “Return To Fortress Europe (The Big Shiny Prison Vol. III)” // All Rights Reserved. // No part of
this book may be physically reproduced, transmitted or digitally stored without the express, written permission of the author: “Return To
Fortress Europe (The Big Shiny Prison Vol. III)” and Anomie Press are independent of any product, vendor, company, music group or
person mentioned in this book. No product, company, or person mentioned or quoted in this book have in any way financially sponsored
this manuscript. No product, vendor, company, music group or person mentioned directly endorses any of Mr. Bartek’s personal opinions
or views. // **Please ask your local book store to carry books by Anomie Press (a D.I.Y. Publisher) // visit www[.]BigShinyPrison[.]com
 3

In 2007, Detroit writer Ryan Bartek traveled the USA to create his own
heavy metal / punk rock road saga of extreme journalism, inspired by the
legendary works of Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac & Hunter S. Thompson.

1 year, 35 States, 600+ hours on Greyhounds & 1000 cities later, “The Big
Shiny Prison” was released – a unique travel book featuring hundreds of
face-to-face interviews with legends in the metal/punk undergrounds, as
well as other alternative & fringe cultures in America.

“FORTRESS EUROPE” (The Big Shiny Prison Vol. II)' chronicled the
author backpacking Europe exploration fringe & alternative culture. This
genre-defying work featured hundreds of face-to-face interviews with a
number of legends in extreme metal, punk rock, industrial, experimental,
rock, electronic, as well as many other alternative cultures in Europe today.

Now comes “Return To Fortress Europe (The Big Shiny Prison Vol. III)” –
a wild journey continuing this saga in the stranger regions of Europe.
Travels include Greece, Romania, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Serbia, Croatia,
Germany, Belgium & Nederland – and interviews with some of the most
prominent metal & punk bands in their respective countries.

This work is also a chronicle of the worldwide protests launched by Take

The Square & Occupy Wall Street, their impact and realities unfolding at
the time of the author's travels.

“Return To Fortress Europe” also includes extended and cut material from
the original “The Big Shiny Prison” as well as other assorted writings by
R. Bartek that have never seen print before.

Less a music book and more a tribute to the Beat Generation, “Return To
Fortress Europe” combines the classic autobiographical road novel with
current European Counterculture.

“Return To Fortress Europe” First Print Edition will be released Fall 2018,
published by Anomie Press. This 6x9, 300 page book will be available for
$18.95 in USA and €19 in Europe, available on the systems of 38,000+
book sellers & retailers worldwide (via IngramSpark) – with additional
distribution via Amazon.

Download Ryan Bartek’s book collection/music discography FREE @

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www.BIGSHINYPRISON.COM

Introduction: The Endless Escape

– Return To Fortress Europe –

Part I: România
Part II: Portugal
Part III: Greece
Part IV: Italia

een liefdesbrief aan amsterdam

(*a love letter to amsterdam)

Welcome To Monte Rio (Original Prologue)

SwampDrainer (An Epilogue)

Neuland (II): Raw Notes

– WYRD HIGHWAYS (MISCELLANIA) –

The Big Shiny Prison: Edited Cuts

SOTCU 2010

SOTCU 2013

Occupied Cascadia
 5

1// FORTRESS EUROPE: a military propaganda term from

WWII, referring to areas of Continental Europe occupied by Nazi
Germany. In British phraseology, Fortress Europe was a Battle
Honor accredited to Royal Air Force & Allied Squadrons for
operations made against AXIS targets from the British Isles.

2// FORTRESS EUROPE: modern slang used to describe the state

of immigration into the European Union (EU). This can be in
reference to antagonistic attitudes toward immigration, or to the
system of border patrols/detention centers used to make illegal
immigration difficult. Since would-be immigrants are often of non-
European ethnicity, the phrase “Fortress Europe” is frequently used
in a derogative context to reference the extreme nationalism within
European politics.
 6

– INTRODUCTION –
THE ENDLESS ESCAPE
by Benedict Badoglio (Former Ambassador of The ALUS Republic)

The Big Shiny Prison, and it's sequel Fortress Europe,

were both initial stirrings of a larger quest in literature & of the self.
These books – while at first deceptive glance – feature the author's
travels across America & Europe interviewing hundreds of bands,
artists, performers, freaks & madmen. The realities were otherwise.
It started with heartbreak; a turgid, desolate dead end. When the
author of these eventual books “Gave Up The Ghost” one fateful night
in December 2006, he slipped away on a Greyhound bus at midnight.
He ran far & hard from his old life in Detroit that had ground to such a
depressing halt.
He felt trapped, with no choice but to flee – and like a man
turning to magick he found unlimited imaginative strength in The
Written Word. At age 25, it was do or die – admit economic defeat &
sign up to Trade School? Or enable one's sole truth & fanatically submit
to the most wild of artistic inclinations.
Does one drop the dream of being a writer taken seriously? A
political writer, travel book author, music journalist & artist defying
genre conventions? Or does the next Joe Blow shmuck “give in” as
always, abandoning youth to install ventilation systems or plumbing?
In defiance, this young man denied society & willingly threw it
all away. Again, he felt without option – and to be a homeless traveller
 7

living out a backpack & letting his curiosity of the unexplored “take the
wheel?” This was the only tangible “Holy Grail” he could envision.
Thus he embarked on a “living book” called “The Big Shiny
Prison,” largely inspired by Henry Miller's “The Air Conditioned
Nightmare” – where all dialogue is rendered as if characters in a
fictional novel. Also, it would assimilate the trance-inducing, free-form
writing of Kerouac's “On The Road” & the abstract political surrealism
of Hunter S. Thompson's most electric works.
He was going to the primitive roots of books such as these – the
literature-smashing format Henry Miller created in daring to publish
first-person reality fronting as if a fictionalized novel – which
eventually did to world literature what “Citizen Kane” did for film.
“The Big Shiny Prison” was decidedly a “Trojan Horse” – a
book masquerading as “music journalism” but in actuality something
quite different. The focus was presenting the most honest way people
actually talk in America – especially in the underground. Through many
a subtle framing a reader discovers a common psychological unity.
As is why anyone looking to “The Big Shiny Prison” for “deep
journalism” in terms of “talking music” will be deeply disappointed.
Yes, music & the underground experience are the consistent thread –
but no one in real life talks like they are being interviewed by
journalists all the time.
There is something unnatural in being put “on the spot” –
especially when people feel the need to impress their knowledge of
obscure underground-related subjects. Being interviewed is often
nervous as a job interview, or sitting down with a lawyer or the police
for questioning. So hit hard & fast – get the “music stuff” out of the
 8

way & onto the “real subjects,” which were often random ones
designed to pull aspects of truth out an individual.
Despite some who may gaze at the text and see a messy,
unconnected narrative awaiting further editing – every line indeed
compliments something else in the book. Just as The Magick of the
Hermeticists – As Above, So Below. There is a correspondence for
everything. And the world of “The Big Shiny Prison” is its own
inclusive, living sphere. All the dots connect.
Unlike the reader, the author has perspective of the manuscript
as a whole. As has been the venom for most critics – thoroughly
annoyed because they didn't quite understand the very things annoying
them were absolutely deliberate & intentional.
Negative reviews or assertions usually revolved around things
that were ostensibly projected in a misleading sense to act as a mirror to
the reader's own psychology. Critics were poisonous in “picking things
up” they were meant to.
Literature is like music – you can do anything you want with it.
And likewise, you stir reaction in the reader. Music is often ambiguous
– it does not tell you what it means. “The Big Shiny Prison” “tells” you
what it means, while it's writer chuckles at the “meaning” you just
acquired and waits to mutate it in due, lurking like some shadowy,
cackling figure behind a paragraph deeper in the text. The author
ambushes you.
That much said, the key to understanding R. Bartek's work is
his hyper-complex, masked embedments – the “Holden Caufield
Approach” of “Catcher In The Rye” where it's not so important what
the character is telling you but the reality behind his warped & deluded
 9

understanding of events. Even when fronting “first person,” he is still a

narrator far distanced from the “self” on his paper. As is all writing –
anyone who tells you otherwise is reveling in bullocks.
What may seem like a loose, insignificant line or minor
unrelated experience often has some kind of extreme psychological
correspondence later. “The Big Shiny Prison” demands you let go &
stop struggling – it drags you with it's flow while lulling you into a
sense that no undertow exists...

“Return To Fortress Europe (The Big Shiny Prison Volume III)” is the
third & final volume of the trilogy – completed roughly 12 years after
the author left Detroit to embark on this strange quest.
The subcultures that molded him also determined his fanatical
attitude. Punk Rock meant something – “never surrender.” Heavy Metal
was its own loose-knit tribal civilization in defiance of the static world.
These concepts weren't simply “music scenes” or “kid stuff,” nor were
they “entertainment” for record collectors. To him, this was Revolution
– a down & dirty propaganda war against a larger Herd Mentality.
And he was hardly alone. As the generations continued onward
from the birth of Rock N' Roll, the counterculture spark kept evolving,
splintering off into innumerable directions, only to slowly come
increasingly full circle as the years progressed.
By the time it reached minds such as the teenage Ryan Bartek
of the mid 1990's – they'd all been indoctrinated to so many varying
subcultures that they all bled together. Formerly segregated scenes &
movements became a vague, gray mass. There was larger recognition of
unity in building a different world at any cost.
 10

And so as an adult, he took the most meaningful stab at it he

knew how – journalism, music promotion, internet propaganda
campaigns, press relations, media manipulation, books, bands – you
name it, he was on it. He was a workhorse until his breaking point,
where it was freedom of travel or cabin fever eternal...

Despite it's quality, “The Big Shiny Prison” did not find a major
publisher. While a number of agents were interested, all offered raw
deals. He didn't believe they knew how to market it either.
While he thought it quite possible a scenario, unfortunately
none of the competent record labels in extreme metal were inclined to
release it. They thought it was solid, but had no idea what to do with it.
Some had released straight-forward metal or punk books, but these
were never huge sellers or label priorities.
Like all independent publishers, they could only get so far. And
also there were political issues in having so many bands from other
labels appear in the book. They encouraged him to self-publish.
Eventually R. Bartek decided to release “The Big Shiny Prison”
as a Free PDF. He sent out the press release before Thanksgiving 2009,
then watched to his amazement that dozens of news services had picked
it up – the download count soared and he was being interviewed for
magazines, newspapers & webzines all over the world. It was when
he'd given up hope and just “threw it out there” that the payoff came.
Nearly 2 years later, he flew to London to backpack Europe for
3 months in 2011 – an experience that was to become his next book
“Fortress Europe (The Big Shiny Prison Vol II).” Released again as a
 11

free download March 2012, it had immediate impact – the underground

embraced it, and he again scored a tsunami of press worldwide.
As time went on, he continued to heavily promote these works –
and the download counts never stopped clicking up, up, up. He
returned to Europe in Summer 2012 & 2013 – backpacking for months
gathering all the experiences & stories what would eventually become
this manuscript the reader now holds – “Return To Fortress Europe.”
Just as the other two volumes were “Trojan Horses,” this book
again defies conventions. However, in “R.T.F.E.” the author is brazenly
aggressive with his political views. He no longer plays the “mystery
man” or adopts the glitzy showmanship of a PT Barnum or Kayfabe
hustlin' Vince McMahon.
He no longer plays into the sleazy punk rock logic of The
Dwarves or the silly Church of SubGenius. He no longer is that idealist
30 year old “SuperTramping” his way across the open Schengen Zone,
idolizing the counterculture hope of the 1960's.
In “Return To Fortress Europe,” the author has finally become
what he always loosely considered himself – a literal refugee; a
homeless, hard-line political radical urban camping his way through
Europe like a grizzled mercenary of a mission he himself enacted.
He still interviews the occasional metal or punk band, but his
focus unlike before is mainly reporting on the global wave started by
The Arab Spring, Take The Square & The Occupy Protests which
changed the political fabric of societies everywhere, especially in
protester culture & the metal/punk underground.
Included herein you will find tales of a wide variety, marching
through terrain as foreign as România, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium,
 12

Germany, Greece, Croatia & Serbia – locations exotic for all. This
book, despite all it's subject-jumping & intentional “inconsistency,” is
strangely coherent. It is sharper then the previous volumes in many
ways, yet appearing more wildly disjointed then ever.
However, no Bartekian collection is complete without this
rousing finale to his nervous-breakdown inducing titanic road saga.
As for the author? The legends speak many ends, however one
thing is for certain – still he rides out there, still the wheels turn. Once
long ago they dubbed him “GhostNomad” – a vaporous, airy traveler
walking voids they could not grasp.
GhostNomad was always his tag – scribbled on bathrooms &
venue walls & rest stops across the world. 'Twas his little “Kilroy Was
Here” spray-painted on the imaginary memorial wall of victorious
Punk/Metal nobodies who came from nothing, never had nothin', then
that nothing turning nothingness & they ran like a slave to glorious
freedom when that nothingness gestated a vacuum of worse.
And just as “GhostNomad” stands in small tribute to the escape
mechanism of a discontinued existence, “Return To Fortress Europe” is
likewise a neon tombstone that colorfully rests upon an otherwise grim
grave of a thankfully forgotten, go nowhere life.

***

– Benedict Badoglio –

Former Ambassador of The ALUS Republic

(5.20.18)
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RETURN TO FORTRESS EUROPE

Subteren Voivode România (Part One: România 2013)
It was in the Hungarian torture basement, where the Nazis & Reds had
imprisoned 70,000+ enemies of The State, that I decided to flee to
Transylvania. This evil place – this haunted subterranean pit echoing the
necrotic energy of 10k murder/tortures – it ruined Budapest for me.
From thereon, all I could see was communism every where I
looked. The great mass of sprawling architecture spoke this grim history in
rambling prose, and the building which so drained me was a kingpin
among world class bureaucratic horrors.
I'd slipped into the “House of Terror” around 11am, a museum
exposing the heinous crimes of the Fascists and Soviets. As the
administrative center of both parties' secret police, somehow the building
stood untouched.
Perhaps it was only because the entire length of Andrássy Avenue
would have burned down had the Hungarian's torched it. Maybe they
wanted to keep their version of a Boardwalk/Central Ave. Or maybe, just
like the Românians, the denizens of Budapest held a similar fear that the
Commies could never be stamped out of existence, that somehow they'd
return like a zombie army, and if they found their monstrous nest in
scorched shambles there would be hell to pay.
After being led through red and black hallways and endless
corridors of propaganda, the looming round skull of Rákosi forever greeted
me with that warm, calming smile.
The third floor was dedicated to the repression of the clergy, and a
carpenter artist had ripped up the wood varnished floor and placed at its
 14

center a glowing white cross that illuminated the room as if it were a

cavernous monastery.
I accidentally stepped on it and shorted out all power on the upper
floor of the museum. Angry Hungarian security guards scowled at me and
spoke over battery powered walkie talkies. Alongside German tourists, we
were all herded into a tiny box of an elevator with glass walls so you could
see the industrial-guts of the hidden section.
The elevator descended slowly & all lights died as we plunged
slow subterranean motion. On came a black & white TV screen – a
survivor recounting 14 years of confinement & torture in Hungarian. 11
minutes later, we had reached the most evil basement on earth. The
elevator halted with the conclusion of his tale, and in I was pushed by
angry security guards still incensed I'd nearly broken an art display.
This basement of savage inhumanity reeked of black mold and
desperation. It had the most atrocious rubber room imaginable, the scariest
crawl space in Europe, and the most tense feeling interrogation room
imaginable.
The only part of it that felt inviting at all was the execution room,
and the hangman's post still stood as testament and as a warning to future
generations should they loose control to bloodthirsty madmen.
When I made the street, I knew I had to get out. The vastly intense
architecture provided an otherworldly, dream-like environment that
seemed as if it would come alive, changing shape and form as to
restructure itself like a robot of concrete and iron. Budapest was a non-
tropical Athens with plastic surgery...
But Budapest at that moment was just not happening for me. The
bare essentials of every European's summary appeared to be true: Budapest
was the only “cool cool” city in Hungary, no one is really speaking English
 15

in the wider sense, there's a nationalist xenophobic undercurrent, street

crazies are abundant, it's crawling with the most shadowy element of Roma
and it's so tiny you can essentially see it all in 2 days (in the normal “tourist
sense,” at least).
But these were not problems for me. I prefer not to hear English
and to be alien. I don't even look at a map before heading into a city – just
dump me in some weird planet, cut me off from anything I know, and go
live as one of their homeless poor.
I dig for the absolute truth. I am a fan of street crazies, and Eastern
European street crazy with it's own form of mentality. I am curious of the
Romani people, and I gladly take the time to listen to their Baltic street
music.
I don't call them “gypsy,” because that equates to the Ni**er n-
bomb of tasteless Americana. They are not gypsies. They are Roma, or
Romani. The Europeans know they are essentially calling them “ni**ers” –
it's ageless. Refer to the children's faerie tales of the Dark Ages for the
popular mentality involving these roaming tribes who reject the notion of a
homeland or even planting roots.
They don't even know their own history. They were mountain men
between India & Pakistan (who famously hate each other) and a shunned
half-breed of both warring cultures. When Genghis Kahn ripped through
Europe, he'd captured tons of Roma as slaves.
Once the savage warlordship of Genghis Kahn climaxed (by his 14
year old wife punching him in the face during BDSM kink, thus breaking
his nose, thus bleeding to death from a smashed artery, thus literally &
ironically “climaxing” with his empire), he'd left giant swathes of them
spread across Europe.
 16

The physical size of Budapest is negligible, because each man is

his own universe. All you have to do is find that right fellow that will key
you into everything, and you can fall into a labyrinthine adventure lasting
for decades within the same 50 kilometer stretch.
Budapest certainly was that place. It could devour you whole for
several lifetimes, if you stumbled upon the right nerve. The tourist hordes
were consistently frantic, kind of a mirror effect of what Amsterdam does
to them yet lacking it's claustrophobic, mega-stoned pressure cooker...

Budapest was symbolic because it was the last of the great European
capitols I was dead-set on visiting. Combined, I had now traveled 8 months
total throughout Europe between 2011-2013.
Every summer I went for 3 month stretches, and this third and final
run I still had 36 days left. I'd reached the end of the road – almost. It was
now August 2013, and it had been a brutally hot Summer. In fact it had
rained nonstop from May to July, and the pan-European gloom ended the
exact day I'd arrived.
While it was true that there were areas of Spain and Greece that I
was deeply interested in, there was only one final territory left that I
considered urgent as a matter of life or death – I wanted România. I wanted
to devour it whole, to crawl through every inch of mystery.
I wanted to understand the truth of the Romani, to walk among the
Carpathians, to stare out from the stone windows of Castle Dracula. I
wanted to see the Detroit-like rot of post Communism.
The problem which plagued me before is the same which plagues
the Românian people – there is no easy or inexpensive way there from the
whole of Europe. Trains, no way. Eurolines buses, no how. Rideshare
through carpooling? No one is ever going further east then Hungary.
 17

Hitchhiking? You have to make it through Hungary too, and they sure look
funny at strangers & don't jive English.
Hitchhiking through Ukraine is a suicide mission. There are some
EasyJet, WhizzAir & RyanAir flights, but you have to make it to a Milano
airport that's in “the styx” & costs €15 from Central to reach – or you go
from Charleroi, the industrial corn-hole of Belgium.
Furthermore, I'd yet to meet a single person who had traveled
România in any real capacity. A guy here or there might have crossed
through it hitchhiking, or perhaps visited Bucharest.
I could get little information other then to avoid drinking the water,
as well as the packs of stray dogs that have multiplied uncontrollably. And
the usual “keep your eye on the stereotype gypsies” thing, which is
casually said like a fact of matter in passing conversation with nearly all
Eastern Europeans.
România was also a milestone in my existence as a traveling
journalist – at least in the form I had taken years ago. Throughout the
entire year of 2007, I journeyed throughout America while being the road
reporter for 2 of the largest heavy metal magazines in America.
City to city I went, dropping myself in the thick of alien
environments as if I were a character dropped into an RPG video game. I
ran wild with it, and the overall American mission ended for me at the end
of 2009. My book on this experience, The Big Shiny Prison, was released
to coincide this personal milestone.
The second book of this saga, naturally, detailed my exploits
throughout Europe in Summer 2011. I headed again to Europe for 3
months in 2012. That year, it was a deep South run – Greece, Italy,
Portugal, Spain + all my favorite northern haunts.
 18

2013 though, I never really thought I'd make it back. I wasn't quite
sure what to do with my life – but I made the money by the skin of my
teeth. I had my health and the opportunity, so I took it.
I would tackle Europe one last time, but I would only venture
where I'd never previously gone. The final frontier was East – it was all
about the Post-Tito/Post-Soviet world for me...

I exited the basement of Nazi doom and crouched outside the House of
Terror. The stench of Budapest crept up – the way too shallow sewers that
were roasting under the thumping sun and that particular stench
accompanying the aftermath of a parking lot carnival in Missouri. Bees
were everywhere, as if soda pop glazed picnic tables were lumped into
pyramids on the streets.
The Roma were heavy in presence, carting wheelbarrows full of
old TV's, bed sets, dressers, electronic doodads, clothing and convenience
accessories into huge disorderly mounds on the sidewalks and peddled
them as if it were a garage sale. They don't need city permits to occupy the
flea market. You could arrest them a million times over, and they will still
go back.
The gypsies as a race are the unflinching, unbreakable angry
antisocial kid in the back of the high school classroom that will never, ever
do what authority tries to force. Whatever that authority is, they will
forever mock & defy it. But that doesn't mean they want to sling their arm
around your shoulder and be buddy buddy with you just cause you think
they are wacky and subversive and you detest the system too. In more
graceful words then mine: “You ain't one of them.”
 19

Although, to be fair, it was Greece that I'd originally intended to go. I'd
flown into Belgium on July 16 th, 2013 and spent the first 2 weeks of this
journey hitching between Koninkrijk België and Nederland before taking a
bus to Czech.
The 3 stage, 5 day, 100 band Brutal Assault extreme metal festival
then followed, and afterwards I dragged my drunken, ear-ringing carcass
onto a convoy of Serbian metalheads, drifting 10 hours south to Belgrade,
Serbia where I spent two days ingesting their culture and dirt cheap
economics – so dirt cheap you felt dirty, ashamed by it, even though you
tried unconvincingly to reassure the Serbian people that their quality of life
was vastly superior to America. But they won't listen – how is that
possible, when they're selling bananas in the street?
It would be a long bus to Greece (Thessaloníki via Belgrade),
because I'd have to head through Skopje (Macedonia) and stay a night
before continuing onward. There was no way to find out the connecting
bus times for the next 7 hour to Thessaloníki. Could be 3 days.
One last Internet check before I headed to the station, and a
distress cable from a Portlander popped in my feed. West Nile virus was
ransacking Greece – her boyfriend had just been quarantined by the
government! The Americans wouldn't let him leave quarantine for 3
months either – to be readmitted only after a battery of tests!
The African super flu spread by mosquitoes had erupted
throughout the country, killing 142 confirmed people. The boyfriend was
nearly to coma. The authorities had no drugs to treat it, and there was a
massive shortage of blood donations.
Legitimate scientists were claiming that at least half the
mosquitoes in Greece were infected, and to stay away. The Greek
 20

government, of course, was too busy stealing money to arrange for planes
to spray the mosquitoes.
Greece was now a tropical paradise of standing water, and people
were growing ill at an extraordinary rate that couldn't be measured because
most doctors don't realize this virus for what it is.
40% of those infected don't realize it, the other 40% is hardcore
super flu, and the other 20% – their brains swell up and they die. It's brutal.
It was discovered in Uganda in 1937, but somehow it broke out in Algeria
in 1994, then to an epidemic in România in '96.
The first USA case was New York, 1999. Now, it's global. But as I
learned while pecking away at my iPod in the Belgrade square, all of
Central & Balkan Europe were having ballooning statistics.
West Nile virus was everywhere, and if I went to Greece, I would
be forced to execute my plan of sleeping outside every night. I was a man
with a tent, not a credit card for hotels. The heat wave was incredible as
well, up to 40+ Celsius (aka 104+ Fahrenheit)...

The most intelligent decision was to wait out the sickness. Crete had begun
spraying for mosquitoes in a panic, and it was presumed the Athenian
parliament would follow suit. Greece was a waiting game.
In the meantime, I'd head West. If the Greek coasts were not to be
enjoyed, I would commence upon the beach bum alternative of Croatia, the
Jurassic Park of the Mediterranean.
I was stoked. Back when Serbia, Macedonia, Slovenia and others
were united under Tito, this former Yugoslavian tropical play land was
their paradise beneath intense forest canopies & gorgeous mountain sides.
It was where the whole of Yugoslavia would head on a summer weekend
to soak up the sun and float in pristine waters.
 21

Following war in the 90's, it was severed. Croatia became it's own
nation, and just recently joined the EU against the wishes of its majority.
The clock was ticking down to Schengen law, and only the politicians
getting IMF & Rothschild handouts were thrilled.
I took a bus from Belgrade to bypass Bosnia, and was dumped
onto the streets of Zagreb, the capitol, on a drizzling night. I spent the
evening trying to find the metal bar which had moved locations, then
attended an outdoor film fest devoid of English language before sleeping in
a mysterious looking park with giant trees & sloped hills.
Wrapped in my plastic tarp like a burrito, I'd slid halfway down the
hill by the time I awoke at chilly 5am. I strolled through the cobble stoned
Old World district alone for hours, but by early afternoon the greater city
was closed down due to a national holiday.
I followed the map on foot 2 kilometers to what appeared a vehicle
roundabout just before the freeway on-ramp. Once I reached it – sweating
like mad and parched from the sun – it was a bicycle thoroughfare. The
only hitch spot possible was a McDonald's parking lot, and I flew a sign
that read “NEXT PETROL STATION” an hour.
No one understood what I was getting at, although I thought they
were just lying & didn't like strangers. It was at least a 5km walk on the
side of the freeway to reach the next big gas station – always the key to a
clean escape.
A Bosnian guy pulled up with his Croatian girlfriend: “Hey man,
I'll take you – but don't be mad that no one stopped. No one says Petrol
down here – it's Benzine. No one knew what you were talking about.” I slid
in & we were heading the same direction – Rijeka, the beach town that was
the former border between Croatia & Fascist Italy.
 22

The couple zoomed us away & we soon were ranting about

LAIBACH, hitch-hiking in Southeast Asia, every genre of extreme metal.
I'd found my people, and not only did they escort me to the most pristine
beach of Rijeka, they gave me swimming trunks, a towel, and plenty of
free beer.
I hung with them for hours before they had to move on, and I lost
myself in the Amsterdam-like corridors of downtown. I got an offer to
work as volunteer staff at a mega Psytrance rave in the forest about 100km
east called “Momento Demento (aka Modem Fest).” The promoter would
provide a free €100 ticket – but I had to get there soon and work 5 solid 6
hour shifts.
` To those heavy metal fanatics reading this now grumbling that this
tale is not yet metal enough for you, understand that this was not any kind
of cheesy loop-based club music we know so well in the States. This was
not tacky disco stuff with mall shoppers in tight skirts.
This wasn't the Matrix soundtrack or a cheesy Daft Punk single.
This was like Skinny Puppy at the bottom of the rabbit hole – a collection
of freakishly dark and evil sounding electronic music layered with horror
movie instrumental dissonance. This was the pounding rebirth of industrial
music for a new generation, spliced with gabba, breakcore, and hardcore
techno of the Ultraviolence variety.
This was as extreme metal-minded as electronic music gets, and
the bass system was to be a tower of power echoing for miles in every
direction. This was the height of Forest Darkpsy, a specific subculture that
has not quite invaded America and probably never will. This is something
unique & specifically European with origins to the Goa beaches of India
where it does not rain precipitation but rather LSD.
 23

It was a solid 10 days on a mountain, and I was debating it. I'd

come here to hitch to Pula, another sunny beach town filled with
alternative lifestyles and an anarchist squat in an old army barracks. I
figured if I was to stay out of the Euro Zone and keep my tourist visa legal,
that place was the key. But so were the 3,000 friendly acidhead stoners I'd
be camping with for over a week.
That night I slept hidden behind a public bus stop that I had to
clear of broken glass & sprinkle dirt around to kill off it's pissy smell.
Endless scores of drunk Croatians had no doubt habitually used it as a
beer-drunk pee corner before hopping on that bus to wherever.
I woke up the next morning, got some grub, then ducked into an
alley to make a hitch sign for PULA. As I was blackening the big U a
younger blond kid with a bloodshot red eye from a bar fight snuck up
talking my ear off, trying to get me to throw down on some weed.
He wanted to practice his English, and invited me out to an all
expenses paid lunch. One thing led to another, and by nightfall we were
headed to KRK, the paradise island just off the Rijeka coast.
Within a few more hours, we were hanging with his deceased
fathers' Balkans' war buddies. One guy had a giant scar on his chest from a
liver transplant, and the other guy a peg-leg.
The guy with the chest scar used to run a bar but drank himself
nearly to death. He explained through the gulps of whiskey he was using to
wash down his heart & liver pills that he'd sold his business for the new
liver. When we asked how he could take his meds like that considering his
health problems he said: “Fuck it, I'll buy another liver – after all, you only
live once.”
 24

I made it back to Rijeka the following day, and while waiting on

the bus to get within proximity of the Psytrance rave, I met the personal
chef for all the superstar DJ's.
I told him that I too am a professional chef, and he made a quick
phone call. I too was locked into my gig of cooking backstage, if I so
wanted. But getting there would be a long hassle – the bus took us to
Karlovic, an hour drive north of our destination.
The bus arrived 5 minutes late, and we sat in the beating sun
another 6 hours to catch the linking vehicle. The chef & I went back to
hitchhiking, but after an hour of no one stopping, we accepted the age old
principle – “money talks and bullshit walks.”
We wrote a huge Euro sign on the cardboard and waved around a
100 Kroner note. In 20 minutes we got picked up by 3 guys driving
aimlessly, and decided they might as well take us for the free beer.
One of the volunteer coordinators picked us up in a small town
called Slujn (spoken: “Sloon”). We were shuttled to a house where most
promoters were cooking a gigantic feast for the starving crew, and arrived
at the exact moment 12 humongous joints were lit & passed. Everyone was
so stoned that despite the mad grumbling in their bellies, no one could eat
more then a plate of spaghetti!
The chef & I jumped into the shuttle, and off we went deep into
mountainous back roads where we almost nailed 2 roaming cows at 50km
that were shuffling across the gravel. The driver swerved, and continued
heading forward.
We were all quiet for a moment, and then he turned to us. “Was it
just me, or did it look like those cows were coming home drunk from the
bar?” We all burst into crazed laughter, because we all thought the same
thing. The look in that big white quadruped's eyes was the same as every
 25

trashed drunkard you have to push out the door when a tavern closes at
2am.
We pulled into the location, and by dawn the light revealed the
paradise we'd been escorted to. It could only be described as a sort of
Ewok Village deep within the heart of a sprawling Croatian forest, a rag-
tag group of acidheads had banded together to throw the ultimate Psytrance
party in a gorgeous, exotic locale that was somewhere between the
Cascadian Mountain Range and Amazon terrain.
They'd occupied the forest in April, and had lived within it for 3
months. They cut down entire tree clearings, made a Tibetan staircase up a
mountain hammered with large logs spiked like railroad tracks.
Stages and structures were everywhere, and a two man German
and Russian team spent 3 days rendering the main stage into a flood of
black lights that was unparalleled in terms of Middle School black lit
poster world. When the LSD experience is at it's most insane, that first
time, when little Johnny drops that first hit after school and climbs his way
back home and loses himself to the images of his walls.
We were living on the other side of the poster, in the peak
imagination of the universal 14 year old, the bottom of the bottom of the
rabbit hole these drooling children look off into when hypnotized by that
flashy mess of wonderland splashed upon the void of black felt. This was
germination. This was art.
This was the final festival of the summer for the subculture based
around taking psychedelics as far as possible, and after a solid 3 months of
such festivals all over Europe, the group flooding into our camp were those
who had gone so deep into the rabbit hole that they were morphing into
Pharaohs & elf creatures & warped caricatures of themselves rooted in
primal subconscious.
 26

As in physically mutating in shape by the suggestive power of

DMT, the drug your brain releases when you die, in a manner that the film
Altered States suggests, even if not fully caveman.
All of these people have gone from raver kids to Gods of chemical
DMT or the natural Chonga (chon-guh), which is the sort of thing pharaohs
had around heir neck in vials. To communicate with the gods. To go
somewhere else for 30 million years dafter hitting one hit of this
mysterious thing (*something I refuse to do, by the way, because I want to
leave that blast fro death. I don't want to one day get to the end of it,
realize I'm on a drug, and be forever trapped in a bad trip that lasts for
eternity because it's the last thought I have before my brain flickers out. I
just want to go out thinking the space aliens I'm seeing are real. All of it,
whatever it is, let it be unraveled then. Fuck looking the gift horse of the
universe in the mouth. Its just rude).
Thus, the carnival of savage pagan psychedelic excess began. I
gave up on it all, and we did the dirty hippie dance. 3,000 max capacity
and the ultimate jaw-dropping underground lineup for 6 slamming days of
full-on Forest-Darkpsy-Experimental-Goa.
Everyone mutated into an elf creature goblin fairy human with
medieval Jetsons/Tron apparel get-ups. The stage was a mighty beating
heart, and electronic octagon of interlocking blocks. Projected onto it was
constant movement in surrealist whirl. It was the beating heart of
UNICRON – this was our boss, and if there was an issue, someone best
had to take it up with him.
No one would fuck with us here – not with a Cybertron decimating
demigod at our behest. This was not a rave party – this was the palm of
Chernabog, and we were the devils dancing in his grip.
 27

The lineup was insane – Kindzadza, Malice In Wonderland,

Module Virus, Fidel, Grouch, Nomad 25, Isochronic, Nargun,
Disintegrated Circuits, Ellis Thomas, Arjuna, Asimilon, Ataro, Chris Rich,
Loose Connection, Paralocks, Dataura, Dirty Saffi, EVP, Hypogeo, Holon,
Dust, Flipknot, Modern Errors, Iketa, Eurithmy, Angular Momentum,
Parasense, Quanta, R2, Whiptongue, Zoolog, Harmonic Rebel, Ianuaria,
Kabayun, In Lak Ech, Sprocket, Soutwild, Xpiral, Wolfeye and
WagaWaga + too many to keep mentioning...
After 6 days it was every man for himself. Thousands had run out
of food and money, and the rain had poured so hard most the cars were
stuck in the downhill parking lot turned mud canyon.
The port-a-potty toilets were overflowing, and someone had been
tripping so hard they actually shit on one's ceiling. It looked like the
aftermath of a war – bodies were strewn about everywhere zonked out and
laying in the mud. Those on foot were altered forever, and their third eyes'
silently burned like hot coals.
As bulldozers clanked through the mud like tanks dropping hay
over mudslide, I tried desperately to find my way out. I had to return to
KRK island – I wanted to swim with the dolphins.
Within an hour I caught a lucky ride exactly there! With an
American guy & 2 Austrian girls, we made KRK by nightfall – spending 2
days recuperating at a hotel room! The American guy had grown deadly
sick – whatever bacteria that had been dragged through disastrously dirty
hippie freak-outs over these past few months had solidified in one nasty
flu.
I feared we all would get it, and had to make my was to Greece
before it was too late. Unless... It was West Nile a nd Mosquitos had been
ambushing the massive party. No point in panic. After all, you'd have to be
 28

bit by a mosquito with West Nile, and it hits very quickly after infection –
at least within 24 hours.
I ended up getting dropped back in Rijeka, having never made
Pula. At this point, the clock was ticking down. Would I attempt Greece
again? Would I follow the Modem Festival hordes to an even deeper rabbit
hole in Ancona, Italy? Could I really handle another 6 days of trance music
at “The Black Sun Festival?” Or was the deep east route of
Hungary/România my hearts desire?

It was the last week of August, and it would soon be growing cold in the
Carpathians. Greece would remain warm enough until early October at
least, but it would consume all my money.
And it was in a civil war of sorts, not only with the politicians but
also the fascist Golden Dawn staging black-shirt rallies and black bloc
Anarchists waging ongoing street battles with them. It had reached a
violent tipping point, and Molotov cocktails were being thrown.
Since Greece had bet the house on a “permanent tourism”
economy – which illuminates a main cause of their irreparable ruin – the
airlines are lifeblood. They are desperate and won't back down from their
scalpers' pan-monopoly.
A round trip flight almost anywhere in Europe is €400, if you are
lucky and buy in advance. Most the time, it's €1000 or more. Depends
where you are. But you can still find that magic €200 one way ticket to
Athens on a Tuesday in Copenhagen or Frankfurt Am Main, because those
are the major financial business centers.
Accordingly, all those cities are ultra-pricey in the meantime so it
saps your reserves. It's like tacking an extra €30 to €40 on your plane ticket
if you are lucky.
 29

All international trains had been suspended years ago. No

Eurolines bus stops exist because West Europe is their racket. You can get
about as far as Budapest with their network, but only then a handful of
times a week. The closer you get to a country in person, the more you get
the cheap buses under the radar because the management doesn't quite
understand the internet yet.
Thus the way into Greece is busing it from Budapest South,
country by country. You either have to go through Albania, Bulgaria, or
Macedonia to get there. Albania is a black hole, filled with gangsters and
old world lifestyles, and you probably need to pay for some kind of tourist
visa to get in.
The cops also stop you and demand money like Mexico or
Ukraine. Bulgaria is run by ex-Soviet mobsters and people have warned
me that kidneys get stolen at petrol station rest rooms in the country.
Or you have Macedonia, which is very Serbian in nature but is also
home to Shutka, the “capitol of the gypsies,” which is an area outside
Skopje. If anything, I wanted to spend the night in Shutka before heading
to Thessaloníki.
The people of Greece had figured out how to exploit
carpooling(.com) – there were endless posts of underground cabs flooding
the board (we call them“gypsy cabs” in Americanese). They seemed to use
it it more then even the Germans with mitfahrlegelhet(.com).
But that was a hassle, and probably €100 altogether if I rode them
all down. The only way to bypass the transportation trap in Greece was a
one-way Easyjet flight from Milan to either Crete or Athens – €80. Easyjet
was like the Greyhound of air carriers. But like Whizzair, or Ryanair, they
would charge you way extra for bags and dump you of at weird airports in
the sticks.
 30

Crete though was what I lusted for. It was an explorers paradise

that never rained and you could sleep outside anywhere. It was Clash of
the Titans incarnate, and one easily could hitch out the airport parking lot.
I'd already found the €30 ferry to Athens online.
After a week in dirt cheap Athens, I could explore every nook and
cranny of Greece on €200 worth of transportation if the hitching scene is
really dead as they say.
Worst case scenario? Buses – and those I profoundly prefer. After
all, once you arrived in Greece, there was no cheap one-way flight out of
it, by order of the Tourism Rape Department's central committee. I'd go up
to Skopje afterwards, unless some miracle took me to Sofia, Bulgaria.
Greece could be mine, oh yes, it could... but what of the dreaded
mosquito?

I took a cheap bus to Trieste (Italy) and hung tight for a night. The bus to
România was €120, and left once every three days. I visited the train
station, and the best I had was a €40 night train to Milan just to gain access
to their magic, dirt cheap airport.
There was an EasyJet flight straight to Crete Island for €80. I had
to think it over, and decided a night in seaside Italy couldn't hurt.
I wandered down the waterfront, past large boats roped into docks.
Glistening and bright, this was a postcard photo defined. Italians were
scattered about in teal and turquoise colors with white pants, eating ice
cream, looking relaxed.
I dipped my feet in the water, and began to notice the slight
burning in my throat. That odd, unmistakable feel of the full body flu
creeping up. I was going to get sick. Between the American guy sleeping
 31

14 hours a day from sweat-hysteric illness on KRK island, and the

lingering threat of West Nile, I feared this might be a wallop.
I walked past the town square into a corridor filled with shops. Not
a word of English, and I was feeling alien. Not because lack of
communication, but because the horde of deranged acid freaks behind me
had vanished. Days ago, I was the multi-talented handyman and court
jester of an otherworldly civilization. Now I just felt dirty and confused.
There was no magic aura pulling me into Italy.
Crazy British guy with circular John Lennon shades spots me out
the crowd, winking a nutty eye. He's on me quick, this benevolent hustler –
a street crazy of the UK breed, which is it's own stripe. Cocktail Charlie,
with his rocker ponytail and denim coat.
One of these wine-drunk Ferris Bueller magic men that roll out
their knowledge of the territory and keep you a little company while they
keep knocking 'em back on your dime. I know his breed. He knows I know
his breed. There's no pretense. He knows I'm gonna get him drunk anyway,
because street urchin is as street urchin does.
Charlie and I go off on a bar hopping cruise rambling conspiracies.
As the night grows, so does the fever and it's weirdly dizzying effect – it's
fluctuating beneath me, like seasick rumbling. Charlie had been on the
streets in Trieste for 10 years, just avoiding Britain. Tells me the locked
him up in a psyche ward because he cried in public at his son's own
funeral. He says the English are so dead they really arrest you for showing
unscripted emotion.
Said he had all sorts of State Intelligence secrets, like all street
crazies do. And being a street crazy myself, I like to sincerely ponder any
nutty shit that these weird people tell me. Well, Charlie says that Obama is
an MI-6 Manchurian Candidate created by the British. He says all you
 32

have to do is look into the guys college records, something about his
professor and his stint in England. Or something.
I'd like to think it's way more likely that Obama is just an alien
shapeshifter, and that they just killed the real Obama direcgtly after he
swore into office. Like when he walked out of public view into the White
House, freakish alien guardians of The Secret Agenda just pounced on
him, froze him in carbonite or something.
But that's probably just bullshit too. At least it would have the
guys' career make some kind of sense. At least there would be a blatant
source to the vileness which has somehow come from this fallen idol of
HOPE and CHANGE.
It's hard to make Nixon look good, but once you scrape off Barack
Obama's smiling corporate motivational speaker veneer, somehow he has
actually don't this. He is one of the most hated men in my country. But at
least I can say that he doesn't make George W. Bush look good. No – that
is just impossible.
Anyway, Charlie and I go out on the town, meet a cigar chomping
Sicilian bar owner, then get trailed by a gypsy midget in a brown trench
coat and a Moe Howard bowl cut.
Just a few teeth, nasty gums. She looked like a Jawa. She was
definitely a midget though. Many gypsies – their parents hack ofF their
legs beneath the knee, so they can get more money hustling the street,
make them look young forever. It's a freakish world ever-beneath.
Charlie and I stayed near the seaside, in a small public park by a
liquor stand. Charlie knew the lady and we got some freebies. We laid out
to sleep and I went under fast.
I awoke to blue sea, blue skies, perfect temp. Charlie soon began
cursing, because the gypsy had stolen his prized oval sunglasses. “Damn it,
 33

damn it! I can't wear n'e'thing more then 10 grams on me nose! They were
special, they were! N'e'thing else just hurts – I had me nose broken 15
times, dont'cha know?”
Then I noticed it – the big red mosquito bite on my forearm – right
where a junkie would plunge a needle. I remembered reading that Trieste
had 30 confirmed cases of West Nile. Whatever the sickness I felt
yesterday, it was begin to rise like a time controlled vice.
Within a few hours, I could be spiked by this click-down iron
maiden. I broke off with Charlie after morning coffee and decided I had
two options – A) chance the flu and camp at the Black Sun Psytrance Fest
for 5 days (the promoters already said I could volunteer) or B) Fly to the
bottom of Greece and make my way through brutal desert terrain in a post-
apocalyptic economy in a cold civil war stalemate or...
C) Go to Slovenia first and chill with some pals in Ljubljana, lay
low, get healthy, and go for Hungary and România. Kill off the worst
summer heat in the notoriously cold Carpathian mountains then if money
and time permit head to Greece for the final 3 weeks...

Slovenia it was. Within the first 15 minutes on the bus, I'd developed the
shakes. I was ice cold, sweating heavy. We made Ljubljana and I head to
the Durum Doner stand. I was too sick to eat more then 3 bites even though
starving.
I found a pharmacy, but they did not sell aspirin in mini packs like
the USA. You have to buy a 20 pack, and it's $25 USD. I made it to the
park, and I collapsed. I went under for 3 hours.
By the time Ivan from the grind/death band Dickless Tracy found
me, I was in ragged shape. He let me crash that night, and I slept a full 12
hours. My shirt was soaked with sweat when I awoke. I masked the flu as
 34

Ivan led me around the city like a tourist guide before throwing me on the
national radio for an interview on Radio Free Slovenia. That night we
attended a secret gig near the mountains, and the next day I was left to
myself on a Saturday.
I was dropped at Metelkova – the ex-Yugoslav army barracks
turned squat art colony. It was a dead scene; a holiday and everyone was
out of town. The connecting hostel was a quiet scene, but pricey.
I went outside to nap in the sun, but I awoke with fever blaring
again. I'd only bought one hostel spot so far, a month ago in Rotterdam
when it was 100 degree humidity soup. I could take the hit, even at 30
euro. I paid, got the key, and found my room was a former prison cell with
bars intact.
I was not in the mood for this novelty when in came my roommate
– a Jewish guy from Israel fiercely advocating a Western led attack on
Syria while around the globe an international coordinated march against
any USA involvement was taking place. We were not getting along.
The second day, I wanted out, but after being awake more then
three hours I had the most pounding, viscous headache I'd ever
experienced. I drifted off sluggishly seeking nourishment and found a
tasty, reasonably priced Chinese hole in the wall. I laid on the grass, and
pecked away at what I could. My head was pounding like a million war
drums. If this wasn't West Nile, I would be impressed.
I imagined some bereft virus drag itself through all the Psytrance
fests of the summer – a cellular amalgam organically created by one
million LSD addicts surrendering themselves to months of the most savage
drug frenzy I'd ever laid my eyes upon. John Carpenter's The Thing was
eating me from inside.
 35

I reluctantly dished out another 20 euro and made my brittle-boned

way to the top floor with 9 beds. I opened the door and felt out of place
among the teenage backpackers & college students, and they looked
unnerved by the bearded, dark tempered man hacking, coughing and
shambling his way to the bed.
I awoke 13 hours later. The glass roof panes were coated in thin
layers of water as a heavy storm rained down. The sickness had broke
away enough to hitch out, but the cold outside remained. It would be an
extremely unpleasant hitch and rolling the dice on my health.
I had the address of a squat in Maribor, an hour away, but I had no
direct contact. What I really wanted was to make it all the way to Budapest
in one shot. It was only 4 hours away, but it was uncharted territory to me.
I hung tight and got my intel in order.

The storm broke. As I was leaving to stock up on supplies, I ran into a

Belgian survivor of Modem Fest in Croatia. He'd been riding a motorcycle
this whole time, and came to Metelkova because someone else from a
Psytrance fest recommended it.
I finally had someone to talk to. Within a few hours a French kid
wandered into Metelkova – he too had survived Modem Festival, and had
spent the entire summer consumed by the fest circuit. We were all still
recuperating, just floating out there.
I explained my plans to the fellas. The French kid had been in
România earlier this summer – the first person I could ever find in person
that properly explored it! He had spent 11 days in Cluj Napoca it was so
amazing. He spent another 2 weeks just floating it, shocked by it's
inexpensive quality. He made Brasov, Bran, Sibiu, Bucharest – he was
thrilled to describe these uncharted delights.
 36

Well then, it was done – I would head to România. But it had

grown too dark to hitch, and if I stayed any longer I would never get on
with it. I walked a few kilometers and camped out near the hitch spot, in an
overgrown field and draped in a tarp.
The next morning, it was frigid at 5am, and due to the elevation of
Ljubljana we were coated in a thick gray fog which made everything
extremely wet, almost as the vapor from a squeezed dish sponge.
It took 4 hours to hitch out, and the man who gave me a lift was a
music professor at the Maribor college. He dropped me at the spot which
lead to Murska Sabota, near the train station. At the train station I was told
a train to Budapest was €120 and took 12 hours.
I went back to the new hitch spot and soon a preppy looking guy
pulled over in his nice, new shiny car. Showed me the spot I really wanted
to go on his smart-phone and directions I vaguely remembered. As he left,
another guy down the street was flashing an M. Sabota sign as well – a
French kid, just as lost as me, trying to get to Hungary.
We spent 2 hours on foot to make the hitch spot which was a really
shit location and nowhere good to legally stop. He took off to try a bus,
and I stayed nearby.
Another night in Slovenia – 6 days. I couldn't believe it, but there
was no denying the skies were the most dynamic reflection of light I'd ever
seen. The clouds were Asgardian above the mountain range. I popped my
tent in a field of construction equipment, and the sweat came on again –
super-flu day 7...
I caught a ride early at the awful spot and was soon dropped at a
large fuel station with dozens of semi trucks parked in long rows. This is
what I'd been scraping by to reach – the launch pad for endless cars going
hundreds of kilometers in one straight shot.
 37

The heat slowly came to a boil, and a honk caught my attention. A

tiny car was about to jump on the freeway, and the driver was waving me
to run up. Behind him a giant semi-truck was impatient, looking like it just
wanted to crush him out the path.
I ran up and hopped in, and we were again swooshing by scenery.
The man was Hungarian, and spoke zero English. He took me 25 minutes
east and dropped me at the spot the French kid and I were trying to reach
yesterday – a tiny on ramp to the freeway between two tiny Slovenian
towns with a gas station perfectly situated.
I was all but 15 minutes from the Hungarian border, and per usual,
this is where everything went wrong. The super-flu had again crept up in
the devastating sun. I waved a cardboard sign for three hours dripping
sweat. I was offering money for the ride, but not a soul would stop. The
next town south was Murska Sobota, and I felt that a cheap train or bus had
to be possible. I was too close to believe otherwise.
I lifted my thumb and a Slovenian man picked me up. Again, zero
English. He took me halfway to M. Sobota and parked at his home,
pointing in the direction of the road I needed to walk.
I began my difficult, sickly walk. Nothing but farmland and
cornfields, decorated by religious displays with burning candles and
images of the virgin Mary.
The first English speaking person that walked by told me it was 15
kilometers to the town centre, and then next public bus didn't come for 3
hours. I kept walking, hoping I'd nab a ride. With every step it grew more
painful, and the hollow eyes of scarecrows seemed to mock me. It was one
of those moments where I knew I had gotten in way over my head. I was
hallucinating and felt trapped in some deleted scene from Johnny Depp's
Dead Man.
 38

7 days now, trapped in Slovenia. Stuck in the middle of nowhere,

and for friends nothing but crows circling me like a piece of meat soon to
drop dead for rabid flesh pecking.
I lucky ride picked me up to take me back to the gas station, but
after another three hours of a rejuvenated attempt, I still had no one pick
me up. A bicycle cop rode up, and demanded to see my ID – a Slovenian
Andy of Mayberry. He was a moderate hard-ass, and took down all my
passport information. Told me I couldn't stand there anymore, that there
was a hotel nearby and I should pay the 50 euro to rent it, and that in the
morning there was a cheap bus south to M. Sobota and from there I could
get a 30 euro train to Budapest.
If I were to take his advice, Slovenia would nearly have cleared me
out of travel funds. I was pushing $600 for a month and a half, if I was to
return to the USA with anything at all. I already knew I'd be on the street
again when I returned, but without a dime to my name, the prospect was
grim.
I walked to the nearest town for food and water, again chased by
that bicycle cop. There was no field or area I cold pop a tent and get away
with it. Like Holland, every meter of Slovenia was zoned and populated. It
wasn't in the culture to have a strange man camping outdoors. They had
solved the problem of homelessness, and a backpacking/hitchhiking
American was an anomaly.
I took care of the basics, then went back to the hitch spot one last
time. I again was stopped by another cop, this time in a squad car. He took
my info, then radio dispatched his people. They let me proceed. By the
time I reached the spot, the sun was setting. No one would give me a ride,.
People looked scared or distrusting of me. Three more cop cars passed
giving me grim faces. I would not be getting out that night.
 39

Once the sun set, I went deeper into that nearby town. I found a
football field for the high school students, and surrounding it was a canal
like a moat. Something about the canal had caused thick mold to grow
from it's trenches, so that a normal grass field had become a swamp with
mossy mold 4 inches thick. It was like horrendous astro-turf. I popped my
tent on it, and it acted like a full body cushion.
The phone alarm rang at 5am, and I made the bus by the skin of
my teeth. Again we drove through the cornfields of sickened doom and
their monstrous scarecrows to the larger city of Murska Sobota. Close to
the bus was the train, and I had found that magic ride to Budapest – 22
euro for a return ticket, and only 6 hours. I could return if need be, but I
wanted to leave Slovenia in the past.
So it was after another long 6 hours that I finally was able to ride
that fateful choo-choo. 2 hours in, the sickness returned again, and I was
out cold in a sleeper car, shivering under my coat in the summer sun,
sleeping most the way there.
When we arrived at the old communist railway station of
Budapest, I was starving. Unlike any other city I'd been to, there were no
bank machines. Everything was closed. I had to walk another hour just to
find money, and by the time I ate a stale sandwich from a mini-shop I was
desperate for sleep.
I wandered into the “too dark Roma park” and found a darkened
area with a large bush that I was able to sleep beneath. It was another
drunken urine forest, and broken slabs of concrete and smashed pottery
were poking me in the back. I was so tried the concrete slab was a
wonderful pillow, and I went deep under cloaked in my tarp like the
camouflaged tamale.
 40

I awoke freezing cold at 5am, and went right off into the city
centre. Historic capitols, thousands of tourists, sunny bright. Everything
was remarkably cheap. Budapest looked like Athens in many respects.
But it was a tourist haven, and I felt out of place. I was dirty,
ragged, at the end of my rope. I decided upon a cheap hostel room to sweat
off the last of the probably West Nile super-flu. I fell asleep by 8pm, and
slept a good 12 hours.
I was free; I had survived. Best way to celebrate? Nazi torture
basement... Not that I in any way thought fascism was cool, but because
the energy of the place might enliven me. There were things to fight
against in this world, and I needed a jump start.
I needed the energy of a thousands lost souls reaching out for a
chance at the life and freedom I currently possessed, and I thought it would
be the ultimate booster to recognize my powers. Instead, I left haunted. I
needed out, immediately...

Nepliget is the cheap bus station on the Budapest outskirts that does not
exist on tourist maps. No one will tell you it exists at the railway stations,
because they are trying to milk every fool.
And what a weird setup it is – the “modern” train station is a
strange wedge in a calm part of town, and the tracks dump you off at
something resembling an open-air airport terminal linked to a subterranean
mall that fells equally Greek as it does Serbian, like an uneven mudslide of
architecture.
The train station to the East was built severed from the Western
European railway system. It was the Commie Superhighway, the back door
straight to Moscow. The building is massive, almost like a Milan church
with rusted tentacles of steel spiraling like corrosive roots.
 41

Inside, it's like an American DMV – take a number & wait in

painful plastic chairs, then walk up to the bulletproof windows & speak
though an intercom with an old lady that mangles barely discernible,
choppy English. It's a mad house.
But train prices are a fraction of what they are Pan-Europe. You
can actually get a huge distance by train in any direction for dirt cheap.
Still, I could do better.
I grilled an old man, and he pointed out Nepliget the bus station
way off the margins of my tourist map. I walked 3 kilometers through
increasingly destitute sections of the city.
It was looking like Detroit, down on Jefferson, with busted old
communist warehouses and crumbling brick walls, Red apartment projects
that looked like grid tombs. Public parks with trash on the lawn, abandoned
clothing, rusting monkey-bars, pee forests & grizzled gypsies eyeballing
me under the burning sun.
I was running out of food and water. I said to myself that if a bus
were magically heading to Cluj Napoca in the next 15 minutes, and that if
it was like €20, I would just hop right on. It seemed a fantasy, but it
happened – I was right on time, give or take 15 minutes. They rushed me
up to the driver who was taking cash and I talked him down to €20!
And this was the last bus to the heart of Transylvania for a week,
and they were only stopping in Cluj Napoca because of two other riders
that had booked in advance for a special exception. Thus, I climbed aboard
the rickety bus – just me, 60 Românians, 12 hours, and not a lick of
English aboard.
It was about 3 hours into the trip when I began blubbering like an
infant. People stared curiously at the odd American dripping tears silently,
the total fool called out by absurdity.
 42

Like a hardened crest shattering to tectonic plates, an ancient wall

of confusion had been undone. In my long quest of journalist drifter
existence, I'd reached the end of the road. This was the last chapter I would
live out for my Big Shiny Prison book series. What began in Detroit would
end in Transylvania.
Here I was, an amorphous man that had figured out the secret key
of escape. Someone who simply walked off one day. A guy that just
uprooted from all he'd ever known and floated away like a ghost with a
crazy mission.
And the phantasm realized all you needed to crack into any major
city was a tape recorder and a little imagination, or just a Sharpie and piece
of cardboard.
The man that realized all past was negligible, and that any day of
the present was utterly malleable, and no one would ever know who you
were if you told them otherwise.
That you could get whatever you want if you just smile and tell
them whatever they want to hear. I was a traveling journalist, simply
because I declared it. I was on tour, just because I said so.
And city by city I thrust myself in as a stranger, and within a week
my experiment birthed a new life that I could have stayed in if I'd wanted
but chose over and over to simply walk away from.
From homeless man to well-connected organizer bopping across
town within 1 week or less. A job, a place to stay, a possible romance &
band. All the sorrowful circumstances of my life in Detroit that drove me
to desperate loneliness – once I left, over & over, I was given a happy
ending I would've killed for if I were to imagine the years of frozen winter
& endless depression.
 43

The more you do this, the more you deconstruct yourself. And
once you've done it hundreds of times, the ones you used to hang around
become alienated to you.
I went from Detroit to San Diego to LA, Albuquerque, Denver,
San Fran, Huntsville, New York, Portland, Seattle. It wasn't enough – the
relentless tours I did began incorporating cities by the day until I had
consumed most of America.
It went on through Raleigh, Clearwater, back into the Northwest,
and then Finally to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague,
Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Milan, Venice, Ljubljana, Bologna, the
whole of Belgium. But it still wasn't enough – Frankfurt Am Main, Athens,
Rome, Barcelona, Lisbon, on & on & on & on...
România was the final destination; I pulled out my iPod, and typed
the following: “In the name of punk rock, heavy metal, and the gonzo-
Kerouac-Miller revolution – I have traveled alone to the heart of
Transylvania to plant the trilateral flag of Occupied Cascadia, the East
Side Crew, and The Cleveland Street Posse upon the very peak of the
Carpathian mountains!!”

***The border cue is what I expected from Russia – militant guards in

uniform with with triangular servicemen hats. The sort of dudes in a bad
horror film that would inspect a cargo truck filled with experimental
chemicals soon to undoubtedly spill and entice the dead to rise form their
graves.
We poured from the bus and began racing towards the toilet shack.
The little old bathroom lady wanted money and would not take Hungarian.
I sidestepped the mob and headed for the other group which were lined
across a fence with their dicks in hand.
 44

It was nasty – a mudslide piss waterfall that had certainly been

there since the borders' creation. It was probably a small ditch 40 years ago
and it had turned into a miniature cliff from the sheer weight of perpetual
urine blasts. The muddy, pissy, shit caked mudslide cliff rolled out into a
bioseptic ravine overgrown with funky reeds.
I caught some English behind me – a tall Brazilian kid and his
Polish girlfriend were traveling the “awkward countries.” They were the
reason we were stopping in Cluj Napoca. Like me, they'd only heard
rumors of the place. We decided to team up once we got to city centre,
whatever that might entail...
Passports stamped, we cruised into mythical România. It was dark
night, and the sparse fields beside the highway seemed infinite and vague.
The pot holed street was lit only by bus headlights as we cruised past gas
stations and motels, trucker stops with gaudy neon lights.
It was a scene out of southern Missouri in 1988. Soon we passed
churches, crucifixes – little white homes all cemented together in one story
blocks with tight metal cages around their property.
We reached the outskirts of the Carpathian Mountains soon after,
and began our upward ascent as if it were a roller coaster ride. It was like
roaring through Eastern Oregon or Northern California, and I was geeked.
We soon parked at a diner that was our last chance of a meal or bathroom
for hours. Fancy, upscale – and they were selling all of their meals by the
gram!
By 1am, we were let off the bus in Cluj. The mountain air was
crisp, and everything had frosted. When I left Budapest it was 37 Celsius,
and here it was 6, at best. We were far from city centre and surrounded by
gray projects and black mountains.
 45

It was like Denver in February. All we had was a gas station beside
an empty road large enough for a highway. The woman at the counter
spoke no English. We also had to adapt to a new monetary system – the
Românian leu (4 leu = €1).
We proceeded onward, seeking a tent-friendly hidden area or a
park to sleep in. The streets became more narrow, and the architecture
more bizarre. It began to look like a vampire movie set, where all the
buildings were a slop of Old World Hapsburg and Soviet design.
Steel shutters and twisted iron bars protected already cracked
windows. Roofs looked like they were molding and collapsing inwards,
paint just falling off in clumps to the ground. The iron bars of most
windows resembled Bane's mask in Dark Knight Rises, this tarantula tomb
of iron enclosure.
I felt like I had bit off way more then I could chew. I was in a
weird, frozen world where I anxiously awaited the xenophobia of bankrupt
locals, shadowy gypsies, and the packs of stray dogs living like coyotes in
the streets. Had these two lovebirds not crossed my path, I'd really be
gobbled up.
We emerged into the main square with an unexpected turn and
proceeded towards well lit college buildings, a well-lit Gothic church with
a sprawling cobblestone square, and a thriving strip of restaurants and bars.
We grabbed a Românian-styled gyro then found Hostel Transylvania
which was €10 a night. But if we were to we'd be paying €10 only until
noon, then we would have to repay for the next night.
When I told the Hostel keeper that I would just go sleep in the park
and come back tomorrow, he thought I'd gone mad. He scribbled down
directions on my tourist map anyway, and off I went at 3am to a tiny public
triangle surrounded by black iron bars.
 46

Wrapped myself up like a burrito in my tarp & I slept fantastically.

5:30am came much longer then it felt, and the air was brisk and
unpolluted. I'd never felt such a stringent chill. It brought an arctic focus,
like the initial sip of a coffee cup filled with lightning. I wanted to set an
easel on a mountain top & paint.
I made my way to an open bar that looked like a haphazard jazz
club in a subterranean cave. In România any establishment can serve booze
24-7, apparently, and these were the remainders of the bar crowd avoiding
the painful sunrise.
This was a town that likes to drink, and the TV's were filled with
80s rock videos. After some Dire Straits and Billy Joel, a Hare Krishna
chant with an animated rainbow landscape went on for a half hour of
“Har-reeeeeeee-Har-reeeee-krish-naaaaaaaaaah.”
I drowned it out as I spoke to a Românian semi-trick driver that
had spent years in America hauling cargo. He shook his head at America.
Like everyone from Transylvania, he though the streets were paved with
gold. Now he just works there for 6 months at a time, then retreats back
home where its sane.
We kept getting interrupted by a hammered Tunisian guy. He was
obnoxious and sexually propositioning women bar-wide, almost getting
into fights with their Românian guy friends who had too much dignity then
to pound on this skinny drunk guy.
He kept coming up to me, “I'm from Tunisia, I don't care, fuck
these bitches. I have a wife back home, she is beautiful. But I no care –
when I go out, I fuck bitches, all these bitches, I fuck them. Hey hey, buddy
– come on, come on.”
Tries to drag me off to his Ukrainian coke dealer and then gets
offended I don't want to snort any blow. It was getting weird for a second,
 47

almost like I'd be coaxed into a fist fight – or potentially be stuck with this
guy for hours.
I snuck out the back door and started towards the hostel. I began
hearing thick chanting, and I immediately assumed it was a loudspeaker
recording. Once I got a solid view, hundreds of older men with fedoras, old
ladies with rag bonnets and traditional skirts were chanting outside the
medieval church. Like monks, they were united in one deep moan.
Back at the Hostel, I sign in. “Ah yes, the writer – The American.
Someone will be here to pick you up at 2pm for the protest – they will take
you to someone quite knowledgeable whom you can interview. We also
have a staff member with a metal band, and he knows of your project and
wants to meet for an interview if up for it.”
I was shocked to find them managing me, but I was thrilled &
grateful at the same time. I'd made some quick remarks to the night staff
about my project, and word traveled fast. I was a broke ass vagrant, but at
last I felt like a superstar!
Then the word “protest” dawned on me. The city would soon be
thrown into an uproar – a national Occupy-style revolt was underway with
a vast coalition of marches and pledged civil disobedience.
A Canadian company was trying to come in and dump cyanide
over the top of multiple mountains to make gigantic open pits so they
could strip mine all the gold and minerals. The cyanide would just be going
directly into the water supply; it was an lunatic plan enacted by purchased
politicians.
I took a nap and went to the main square. The activity was
beginning to swell. Crowds of impassioned people were gathering,and
soon it was as if the entire University was there.
 48

This was a massive showing – the spirit I remembered so grandly

during the peak of Occupy. We could not speak the same language, but we
all understood the hand signals. We all had a grasp of the organization
issues with the nod of a head.
As I sat on the park bench looking at the gathering throng, from
the sky buzzed down a police drone. It looked like the Empire's spy droid
from the Planet Hoth. It just hovered there watching me, videotaping me,
taking pictures. What a head-trip! The Orwellian future buzzing about like
a multi-eyed insect on the backdrop of Old World cathedrals and Hapsburg
buildings!
As the speakers worked the crowd into a frenzy, the two travelers
from last night caught up with me. We began a long walk seeking
traditional food, getting ourselves lost in intricately painted Gothic
churches. There were more worship spots then there were businesses, and
the religious were out in droves.
Soon we were met with a throng of angry protesters – everywhere,
huge columns chanting & waving flags as the cops luckily marched
alongside them. This was a peaceful march, and the people were winning.
Later that night, the government called off the deal...

The next day, a smoky restaurant – this time with Andu Anches, the bassist
and vocalist of Krepuskul. They are an experimental metal band weaving
their sound from a host of different styles.
Any time Românian metal gets brought up, I hear this name. What
better a way to kick off the next portion of this mad telling? Andu strokes
his goatee like a super-villain conjuring a maniacal plan, lights up a
cigarette and then unfurls the legacy of Krepuskul...
 49

“OK so we formed out band in 2005. Our first show was in

January of 2007. we changed like 15 members in the first 2 years. We
started playing live a lot we tried to maintain an average of 30-40 gigs a
year. We released two albums one in 2007, then in 2010 we release the
'Game Over Album' and to promote it we did a big tour. I think it is the
biggest tour in România made by a Românian band. It went for almost 30
concerts. We also started touring outside România seriously. Right now we
came back from a tour in Russia, Belarus, and Moldavia also. Really nice
places. We went on the bloodstock festival in UK last year. We opened for
many big bands, international bands like Sepultura. Rotting Christ,
Crematory, Pain. In 2011, 2012 we took every festival we could. Right
now we are working on a third album we hope to release in 2014.”
“Your site had it listed as experimental...”
“It's more a death metal thrash with black influences with some
metalcore, old-school hardcore and all this mixed with non metal like
reggae, swing, funk, haha. That is our style. We didn't want to do it like
that at he beginning but in the end we enjoyed it.”
“So touring Ukraine and Belarus, I hear its kind of a closed
society.”
“Don't talk about politics and don't talk with the police, or
something like that, from what we saw its a really nice country, really good
looking, the people there are nice. We had only one night in Belarus, but
from what we saw they are really great people.”
“Is it like Ukraine where cops stop you and want money?”
“In Ukraine it was like that in fact. We passed the border but only
once they wanted money. We didn't want to pay and they kept us there the
whole fucking day. We had a little not good thing in our papers & they
made us turn back in the Ukraine which took us the whole day. Then at
 50

night it was a huge que at the border. We got to Russia 10am. We still got
to the concert, but... we had 4 gigs in Russia.
“What was the Russia experience like?”
“Really nice. The border, the police – they were really
professional. We didn't have to wait more then a half hour. And then also
the concert, the crowd is really great. Everywhere the crowd was really
cool, in Moldova, Ukraine they like to move a lot , they like to mosh pit
allot. You don't see it everyday in western Europe. The people are a bit
more static. But if you go to this part – Slovakian, Hungary, going east –
the crowd is more crazy and responsive.”
“Tell me about the Românian metal scene...”
“Well its kind of growing up – more and more foreign bands are
coming now. This has its advantages and disadvantages. We get to see
many bands, but the crowd becomes divided. Some go this, to that, so on.
The scene is growing. We played in Brasov – its quite a big city. But it was
really cool. It was the fact for 3 or 4 years they didn't have places to play,
now they are having one or two pubs which do metal concerts. We played
there one and it was amazing,. In Sibiu we played 5 or 6 times, felt good
every time. In Sinai I don't think they have real metal scene. Its kind of
small town and more of a town for people that want to go in the mountain.
Another city we like is Petrosani. I think we had more then 150 concerts in
România. We played pretty much everywhere we could.”
“You have a nightmare tour story for me?”
“We were touring in Bulgaria. And we were playing the seaside
and the day we were coming back directly home and in the middle of
nowhere our tour bus stopped. The engine stopped and didn't want to go
anymore. We found ourselves with no water no food no cigarettes no
nothing. It was also on a Sunday. It was also really cold and heavy raining
 51

and saw a sign that the next village was 5 kilometers. So we walked over a
giant hill that was 5 km long trying to find an open shop but there was
nobody it was all deserted. In the end we finally managed for food and
water. But then a platform came and we got our bus on and this is how we
got back into our country – on a tow truck. We crossed the border like this,
even though it was totally illegal. We took the train back from Bucharest to
Cluj but on the way the train engine broke too. So we got stuck another 6
hours. It was a mess. But now as we look at it it seems like a funny
experience but then it was pretty hardcore.”
“About the church...”
“Unfortunately the church here is interfering with the politics, the
community businesses in places they shouldn't be. Also I think they are
just getting money from the people and instead of doing – building shelters
for the poor, helping the communit8ies, they just build huge churches and
this is pretty much everything. For now, they are kind of a big pain in the
ass...”
“We are roughly the same age. I'm curious what it was like
living through the fall of communism and what that was like.”
“Well we kind of got rid of the communist regime in December
1989. but the people who were leading the country in that era kind of
stayed after. I think it happen3ed everywhere in all the ex c9ommhyunist
countries so this transition was very hard for the first 10 years. As an
economy – the life changed but it changed a bit slow. After 2000 things
managed to be a little bit more light, but we still have mass corruption. We
still have people who first think about the money then the population.
Since we entered the European union things got a bit better because we had
some anti corruption laws imposed by the EU. Also I think the generations
are changing so more young people are getting into politics and high
 52

positions. I hope that in 5 or 10 years things will be totally different, its ind
of a hard transition. The communists were here for 60 years. So you cannot
repair the damages in 20 years,. Usually it takes longer then it took to fuck
it up. We still have to change the old generations way of thinking, but I
think we are going in the right direction,. I hope. You know, in ro0mania,
metal started in the 90s. Before that there were only 3 or 4 heavy thrash
bands, because in the communist days in order to be a band or musician
you had to do a test at the ministry of culture so they only let play those
that were convenient to them.”
“Was joining the EU a public vote?”
“I think everyone wanted to join the EU. We were supposed to
from 1996, but it took us almost 10 years. Also because the corruption the
fucked up politics, they just postponed. They didn't want us since the
beginning,. It was kind of understandable. They are still holding us away
from the Schengen open border area.”
“You got a ghost story for me?”
“Its no ghost, but it happened to me. I was going with a friend to a
city and in 45 kilometers we changed a tire 4 times. The thing was it was
the same tire, the same wheel, every time. But the same wheel, same
fucking wheel – it happened only after we passed a church or a cross. It
was also rented. So we said that car was really satanic & didn't want us to
pass churches. It was also on a winter night, -20, and we both got so sick
we stayed in bed the entire week after. We did like 100km in 8 or 9 hours.
We kept calling friends saying will you please bring us a tire, we need to
get to Cluj. It was a kind of a crazy story.”

A few hours later, and I'm finishing up a cafe table interview with Divided
By Perception, one of the better metalcore/deathcore acts in town. We
 53

cover all the familiar basics and they reassure me and all who will listen of
the same basic challenges all of us face as musicians.
Wherever you go it seems, the clique is in the place. Wherever you
go, shady promoters want pay to play gigs. With the lack of activism and
punk rock styled occupations, you are left with no house venues, no proper
squats, and random bars more often playing 80s covers and traditional
music.
Metalcore is still the rumbling of the day for the younger pack
about România. Apart from Diamonds Are Forever, Divided By Perception
are easily one of the most noteworthy exports of the genre from
Transylvania.
But more then anything, they want to know whats on the outside.
They want to know about America, about touring in the EU. Tommi, the
lead vocalist, explains how difficult it is to tour abroad because just like the
Serbians, all Românians need to get a tourist visa just to enter the EU –
despite being an EU country. The European Union treats all of România
like a dog on a leash.
I wave goodbye to the young metalheads & make my way towards
old-school pasture. I am to meet with the guitarist from Decease – a
death/thrash styled band – at the subterranean jazz club.
But first, I need to have a long discussion with “Alex,” one of the
protesters I met yesterday who was totally fluent. The guy had a good vibe
to him, and he seemed the right candidate to put into the words the emotive
uproar which I remotely witnessed last night...

“What is your PhD about?”

 54

“Oh my god don't ask, its something very fucked up in the brain –
yeah its philosophy so some thing about paradox and hiding your thinking,
some crappy thing...”
“You want a tailor made cigarette?”
“No, I like to be the tailor [starts rolling his own cigarette]... and
they're fucking expensive. If I would smoke real cigarettes I couldn't
afford smoking.”
“Have you lived in Cluj your whole life?”
“No, no. just 8 years, since coming to the university. I came from a
small town in the south of Moldavia, the Românian Moldavia, not the
republic of Moldavia.”
“People told me basically there were no squats in România...”
“Nope. We've been wanting to do one here for 6 months, but it is
very hard to find a state owned building – that's worth taking. Haha.
Because 80% of the town centre is owned by the church and not the state,
and that is a big problem. Because if you take it from the church no one is
going to be sympathetic to you reclaiming the space. If it could be the
state, OK, its the state, its for everybody, nobody is using it for social
usage. So the church – the state has very few buildings worth going in.
and that sucks. Also there is a good community here but I don't know if its
enough to squat a place and keep it. You could squat it but after one week,
two weeks, the police will kick you out.; unless you have a big
mobilization of people. I don't really see that happening right now, but its
changing gradually. I see a lot of people...”
“Why two months ago? “
“The law was the moment, the law for Roșia Montană. I didn't
really expect nothing like this”.
 55

“So it's basically a Canadian company wants to come in, dump

cyanide over one of the Carpathian mountains to melt it down so they
can plunder the gold and minerals, and then all this goes in the water
supply, and...”
“Four mountains – four mountain tops. Its a junior corporation
they had no projects until now. And they are trying to create the biggest
open pit, open mine in Europe. It would be the biggest. Near Mannheim is
the biggest pit in Europe, and its horrible. And the mine projected for
Roșia Montană would be 200 hectares more. It would be a 180 meters
down with a huge lake of cyanide. They are trying to tell us “no, it wont go
into the ground, we're going to put some something on it and it will stay
there for only hundreds of years. What they are doing in Canada though, in
neutralizing the affects of cyanide, because there was mining like this – is
to freeze the ground, they are actually making huge holes in the ground and
freezing the lower strata to neutralize the cyanide and arsenic. Canada is
spending 1.5 billion a year fixing this shit. And our profit would be 5
billion. So in 5 years all profit would be gone.”
“It doesn't make any sense”
“Yeah it makes no sense”
“Is it a paid off parliament trying to push it through?”
“The parliament, they have no balls to do it from the government,
so they said 'let the people vote on it' – the people being those in
parliament, the representatives. I don't know if you saw this but today
parliament made declarations that they are going to vote in the parliament
to ban it. Yeah, because they are afraid. Which is good. And the company,
they are going to try and sue the Românian government for banning them.
Which I don't give a shit. Good, sue the motherfuckers. They signed it, so
they should pay.”
 56

“And they've been trying to do this shit for awhile now?”

“15 years. And we've managed to stop them for 15 years.”
“Is Monsanto banned here?”
“No, fuck no. we had two ministers of agriculture were employees
of Monsanto and they were pushing for GMO's. Now, the quantity of
GMO fields here is diminished. But The government gave us one of the
most retarded laws in the history of law making – to allow GMO crops in
protected natural sites. No, fuck no – That's why they are called protected!”
“Could you tell me more about the political landscape here?”
“Well România is obviously a post socialist country, hahaha... zero
when it comes to civil activism or any kind of activism up until now. Now
we have to go after banning cyanide, because they have another project
near Deva. But civil activism – what communism did was destroy the
social texture of people so that there was no solidarity, no nothing. We had
in the 90s the hugest occupy-like movement. Tens of thousands of people
occupied the university and the square in Bucharest. And they were beaten
horribly by the miners. So after that a lot of people emigrated, the
progressive people because they couldn't really live here. And we had like
jack shit, so this is starting to change for 2 years now, more and more
people being aware of the problems.”
“What I was basically explained that the overthrows of
Ceausescu was a coup by his own people to save their neck, and they
killed him fast as possible so he couldn't talk.
“Yeah, it was a coup.”
“And it took about 10 years to weed those people out.”
“No – they're still in power now. That's why people say that were
still living in com,communism, but that's such a big piece of shit. We didn't
have communism when it was communism. How can you call this wild
 57

capitalism that we have no com,communism? The next day after the

revolution – 'ah, flea market. This is what we always wanted.' so yeah, they
are still in [power. That's why its very hard to structure an anti-capitalist
discourse in România because they think what does that mean?
Communism, like we had? No thank you. and its really hard to say no, that
wasn't communism, one, and second, no, not that – dictatorship, what the
fuck? In 89 there was this slogan in university square better off dead then a
communist, better something then an activist. So an activist meant
something really bad. In the 90s if you were an activist you were a
communist. But now this has changed. It means something good, you are
doing something, you are involved. But it took like 20 something years.
And gradually people are starting to wake up to this. There are a lot of
youngsters coming along who have almost nothing – they fail their exam to
get into university. Like 50% fail rate. So these people have shit jobs, they
will continue to have shit jobs anyway but without the degree they will
have even shittier jobs,. And they have nothing to look forward to. We
want to privatize health, we privatized the railroad cargo system, electric,
oil, everything. So we have nothing basic ally.”
“Is health care the only thing left that the state provides?”
“Yeah, and education.”
“Is the health care shitty?”
“Oh yeah it's shit-shit. Its horrible.”
“Is it worse then the USA?”
“…I don't know.”
“Hahahaha”
“It's debatable.”
 58

“If an ambulance picks you up and takes you to the hospital, hos
much does he charge you? In the US they make you pay $900-$1500
dollars.”
“Nothing. But in the new system, it will only be free to stabilize
you, and then after the money starts rolling... In activism, things start
moving in Cluj in 2012.”
“What sparked it?”
“Privatization of health. And those in power were very very smart.
While over Europe you have movements that build up very gradually, now
they are 1000, tomorrow 5000, 5 weeks a million. But in Bucharest, by day
3, violence broke out. The people that started the violence, nobody knew
them. They had hoodies on, they were infiltrators and afterwards people
saw them going to police and shaking their hands and leaving. So it was a
big plan on the part of the police to discredit the protesters. To say 'look
here's these football hooligans that come to the streets to smash
everything.' Which wasn't true, but, I get, you know, people were
genuinely angry. And I have no problem with being genuinely angry. I
mean fuck banks. In România they wanted to put a bill out to like when
you identify an abusive clause in a contract and you take it to court and
win, the law should change for all clauses. It should be annulled for every
contract. Well the banks opposed it, saying this would be a €600 million
loss for the banks., so this sis why they did not. So what they are saying is
abuse is good, because otherwise the banks would lose money. What the
fuck is this? Really. It's a fucking nightmare,you know,so this happened
last year and people started meeting everywhere, organizing, going all over
the country. Its a big part of that mobilization that is now making this
happen here.”
“Do people talk about the Bilderbergers here?”
 59

“Yeah but they talk about it in a very conspirative, the masons, the
Jews, the various anti-Semitic...”
“So you can't pull apart this stigma that it's not a hoax and
should be taken serious...”
“Yeah. I mean they are rich people, that's the problem. They have
all the power and it doesn't matter what nationalist they are. They could be
Românians, that doesn't mean anything. They control 80% of the world.
That's the real problem, not that their Jews or masons or whatever the
fuck.”
“Because the Freemasons these days are mainly a charity group.
I mean, it was just a secret handshake you'd learn from a master stone
architect in the old days...”
“Well that's changed over time...”
“Oh yeah, no doubt. They've been involved in many unsightly
things I'm sure.”
“Yeah, like the union of the free Românian little countries that
went on to form the larger România after the first world war, during the
Versailles Treaty. We got the union because all the heads of state were
masons, as were the heads of state for all the civilized winner states. There
are masons involved in politics yeah, but that's just some conspiracy piece
of shit that takes attention from the real problems.”
“When I saw the Occupy wave happen, I saw Bucharest...”
“I went there. It was a total fiasco – it didn't even actually start I
went there and the idea 'let's not put up tents because the police will
destroy them, let's just sleep in the street.' I slept there one night,. We sang
some things, maybe 40 people. And only 15 remained the whole night. At
one point some people went to a bar and returned later kind of drunk which
wasn't very good. And then people walk by and think 'those are the
 60

occupiers? fuck no we don't want that.' so I just left the second day.
Actually, last night, 8 tents remained in Timisoara. They occupied the
central square and nobody is telling them anything...”

“Alex” bails to further the good work of civil disobedience, and in comes
Radu Vulpe the guitarist/vocalist of Decease. Influenced by the late
'80s/early '90s thrash scene, Decease combine a pummeling drum style
with dynamic riffs, battering bass & grunt heavy, raspy scream.
In 2012 their debut “Exhort to Obliterate” was spawned, and by
August of 2012 Decease put out their first official video. By December,
Decease had signed a deal with Hatework Records//Asociatia Culturala
Manifest. February 2013, their work was unleashed...
“Did you hear the new Black Sabbath album? You like it?”
“I've listened to it about 26 times. I'm kind of bored. It got out at
my working place,e I work at the biggest music instrument shop in
România. Its just stuck in my head. Its good but, I don't think ill ever listen
to it again, haha.”
“Well, tell me your background in music.”
“Well I played live in bands since 2005, with NECROVILE. Pretty much
brutal death metal with programmable drumming. Since then we are still
playing, we did 5 or 6 European tours. We did obscene extreme festival.
Between this band, I've played 6 or 7 over the past years but not all metal.
One was very pink Floyd, another was metalcore but in a time before it
was fashionable now everybody plays metalcore, its the shit for Cluj.”
“I went to obscene extreme in 2011 and 2012.”
“I think since 2010 OE started getting more death metal then
grindcore. I played there in 2009, back when everything was like dead
 61

infection or early Napalm Death. Now, I've read about Curby – he put out
an edition in Asia and USA”
“Yeah, he did 4. I actually sent a guy to Mexico to cover that
one. I heard Australian went OK, but Indonesia didn't have much turn
out... did you go to Brutal Assault this year?”
“Yeah, for me it was the festival of my life. This year was brutal –
everything, everything, it was the perfect combination of everything.
Gutalax, Decrepit Birth, Dying Fetus – a little pause between Anthrax and
Entombed. It was perfect.”
“So you did a tour with NILE recently?”
“Yeah we just returned from a tour with /Nile,. It was a short tour for us,
for Decease, 6 concerts. We had very bad luck and when we arrived to
Vienna – the stage was 4 meters square. We had huge equipment. It wasn't
even possible to put everyone there and play the show. We said let's put
everyone on the stage, and then we play where they are standing,. Haha. I
think its best. The pre-sale was only 90 people. It was pretty much
impossible to do that show, but the rest of the tour was amazing. It was our
first European tour. It was a big achievement to play with Nile. In Poland,
the first two shows it was at the anniversary tour of Vader. They just
gained 30 years of metal so they are on tour and now playing in the states.
We also played with Hate. And to see Vader in their homeland – its
definitely a different case. Int heir home town, their home country – its a
totally different approach.”
“What is the general message of the band?”
“We usually talk about politics and war – everything that's anti
right. Everything is denied since you are born, when your grow up, when
you die, everything is being taken from you. first were started with
religion. In România its the dumbest thing. You are actually being
 62

obligated to be a Christian. It is the ideology of the communist period – old

fashion. Whether orthodox or catholic.”
“Is this a particular religious spot then eastern Europe?”
“I can call this the epicenter of Christian fucks. I don't think the
Baltics, the Hungarian, the Bulgarians are more Christian then us. Here
everyone is Christian, everyone believes and is afraid of god. Except the
hipsters. Here you have to be a metalhead or hipster or modern guy not to
believe in this shit. So, rewinding... since the day you are born you are
obligated to be Christian. Fuck this shit. You don't have a choice here. Its
not like they pressure you after that. When you are 18 you do what you
want like everywhere else. But when your a kid with fucked up parents
with fucked up minds, brainwashed minds, you are obligated to go to
church. I think i was luckiest – my parents were divorced since I was 3
years old. The part from my father was more question, he is a pastor. He's a
preacher, you know. Of the dark side of Christianity – like the worst kind.”
“You've toured a bit – what is a good nightmare tour story...”
“I had a really weird experience. After a festival, we were 70 or 80
kilometers from România. Me and my girlfriend, we got ditched by our
friends and were left there alone. We said to ourselves lets go and
hitchhike at 4 in the morning. We'd met some really crazy people on the
road while we were hitchhiking. There were three guys, one was a bald
guy that didn't speak English. He repeatedly said “this is not a safe place
to be – walk walk walk.” he kept repeating “walk walk walk, the police are
coming, walk.” The other guy was 12 year old kid – just standing there
doing nothing at 3am. The third guy was an old guy – you know the
Buddhists with the robes and those long hats? It was an old guy on a
bicycle with one of those hats, and he was riding his bicycle in a circle
towards us and kept ringing his small bell. It was like the twilight zone,
 63

you know. So I said to myself fuck this. So my girlfriend and I went to a

public place. Your in a foreign country and something like this happens to
you and you are alone,. So we went to a park, sat on a bench. And until
6am we heard that annoying bicycle bell. The old guy was looking for us.
Fucking creepy. No one believes me. The town was Kavarna Bulgaria,
with the metal mayor, with the Ronnie James Dio statue...”

***Brisk was the air that next morning, rising from that notorious 04:00
Transylvanian chill to a steady 13 Celsius by 7am. It was a 15 minute walk
from the touristy comfort zone of central Cluj to the Autogara (aka “auto
garage” or “bus depot” in Americanese). I made it on foot, quickly
realizing the major contrast between the cleanly facade of the University
area and the real Transylvania before me.
I felt that I instantly traveled into some grainy 1980's BBC
documentary on Iron Curtain life. Big dark blocks of buildings, freaky
churches, cobbled stone & brick streets, oblong building structures and
steel shutters.
Like vampire mythology, it's as if they entomb themselves at 4am
into these giant blocks. When you walk those empty streets at that moment,
with the Bane mask windows and chipped paint dust in clumps like
neglected basement cellar rooms, Transylvania feels the way your flesh
zangs when you lay down on cold marble. The way the Earth just pulls you
out of your body, when there is no cardboard or blanket between you and
the ground.
As you walk, the Carpathians just pull it out of you. Not like a
leech or a parasite, but in a mighty solidarity with the Earth. It invigorates
and propels. Yet it is a lonesome pulse at once; it bears sadness and grief,
but with a faint vagueness way.
 64

Your body receives it like a hushed whisper you can't clarify,

though you know whatever it speaks is a typhoon. It trembles your core,
like Odin descending to the Earth and screaming at your sternum like an
enraged gorilla ready for the battle of primate primacy.
But then, as always, no matter how freaked out or confused you
are by it, you simply walk up to one of the people where this is all they
have really known, and they are legitimately some of the nicest people on
earth. Transylvania is filled with those that listen; they are a people who do
not speak just to hear themselves think aloud...
The Autogara was a fraction of the price of Nepliget in Budapest.
Since the trains were old world and the railways had to go around the
mountains, the only way between cities were large mini vans, some with
trailers hitched to their bumpers that were open air and covered by fastened
tarps.
Packed like Haribo bears in a crinkly wrapper, we drove off
towards the south. I selected GoaGil on my iPod and drifted back into the
Momento Demento mindset. I was once again with my ghost army of
maniac acid-freaks doing way too much goddamn DMT.
It rained in the early portion, giving the black outlines of the
mountains a freaky character. The sky turned gray, and we began traveling
through some of the larger outlaying towns, until we started passing small
villages connected to sprawling farmland and valleys. Everything was old
world about these tiny ranch style homes, enclosed like sardines and oddly
resembling minor Mexican towns.
As we went deeper into the mountainous region, the Carpathians
were surprisingly spread out. When we did get close to more wooded
areas, there were scores of gypsies selling potatoes by the side of the road.
 65

There were probably thousands of Roma encampments under the over of

the trees.
They were everywhere, just fishing in the lakes. Tons of wild dogs
just hanging around, wandering in packs. But they looked depressed, used
to a beaten life.
They were not savage, but acting like all of România was a
domesticated pooches living room. It was as if they detected an invisible
dome stretching along the country borders. They knew instinctively that
they were home.
We arrived in Sibiu after a wave of trepidation. I felt extremely out
of place, unsure where to go or what to do. I was to meet with a guy named
Flaviu from a metal band called Heavy Duty, but he wouldn't be off work
until 17:00. I had 6 hours to kill.
After the sub-Amarillo like emptiness I saw passing through most
of these cities, I thought Sibiu might be akin to Belgrade – broke hustlers
on money-loaded American like horse-flies on a mound of feces. After
what looked like a field of broken oil wells and a run down private airport,
we approached the city.
On the horizon, it was much larger then I'd expected. After a quick
turn it was an extreme mix of Old World and Iron Curtain again, and both
of their social fabric emerging into this digital era.
I exited the bus and went for a stroll, getting lost in a section that
looked like a mini industrial rail-yard without tracks and somehow
haphazardly built all over a normal city section.
I made my way to city centre, and was immediately in the most
Old World looking city I have ever been to in my life. The town centre was
vampire world incarnate, all buildings medieval and crooked with slanted
roofs covered in moss. Huge churches, iron statues, cobblestone streets. It
 66

was a UNESCO World Heritage site, and it earned the title. After all, the
first official record of Sibiu dates from 1191.
I decided to celebrate, and went back to pretending I was on
vacation. I sprung for pizza – a fully round oven baked beast at a fancy-
pants restaurant with coffee and a payment equal to some french fries
smothered in mayo at a Brussels food cart. The best pizza I had in Europe
thus far, Italia be damned!
After a few hours in the more posh town square, it was starting to
drag just watching the children feed pigeons. Flaviu Volosciuc from the
band Heavy Duty came right up to me with an outstretched hand. This man
was a pro – straight to the point, no bullshit attitude. He seemed unsure if I
was some weird con man, but was down to give this weird journalism
experiment a shot.
He thought I was absolutely crazy. Not because of my passion for
writing, or the passion for metal, or even backpacking. It's the whole thing
of just showing up to a city without even looking at a map. He couldn't
fathom why I wouldn't research a destination, or even bother to Google it's
most basic attractions and atmosphere.
I explained quite simply as I always do – that's all part of the
adventure. I let the universe take me where it may, even if it isn't doing
anything at all, and just go along with the magic notion and try to navigate
it as such. Let the fortune cookies do the management...
After a cautious introductory rambling, Flaviu warmed up; he had
family randomly living in my hometown of East Dearborn. We dug into a
beefy stew while I dispelled the fixed idea people seem to have of me as a
potentially way-too-politically-correct blowhard.
 67

We took a stroll to the store and picked up the mixtures needed so

we could complete his homemade wine mixture. Flaviu had been
fermenting his own supply and gotten quite adept to the process.
Flaviu explained how the Gypsy King of România had died the
week before I arrived, and that his “castle” was in Sibiu, which was a large
mansion that looked like a messy squat house from afar.
When the Gypsy Kind croaked, the Romani pushed ox carts into
the streets and shut down the city Occupy style, with a sudden and glorious
parade for their dead king.
There are, of course, people who call themselves “Gypsy Kings”
all over the world but this was The Big Man of România apparently, and
his son had just taken over whatever duties such a subterranean monarch
would perform.
I wanted to show up to his castle mansion with it's iron gates and
request an interview. That would be epic! Flaviu just laughed at me, and
said not to waste my time. There was no chance they would talk to me.
And even if they brought me into that ramshackle palace, I'd probably be
leaving a wallet lighter & travel-pack picked clean...

“So the band is called Heavy Duty, we started it as a simple hobby. I mean
I had always this dream from high school that I should try to play in a
band. I had some experience in playing guitar, but I never had the financial
power to start the band,and after I had my second job I believed it was
time. So we started in a garage down the street,. This was 2008 and we did
this for 3 or 4 months and the other guy quit. So I moved on. I s thought
the perfect combination would be with two guitarist – the classic thrash
band so to speak and I found him in a bus. He actually played a show one
year ago – it was a Metallica tribute. So these were the beginnings. I
 68

remember I didn't have a head for the guitar, a power amp, anything. I was
just playing through a power amp with old overdrive. The sound was like
white stripes or something like this, ah ha. And he came with a hi watt
combo. And wow – it was only 30 watts. But wow, it was amazing. We
found this place by the train station and we rented the place with a lot of
money and we had to sign a contract for one year. We said OK let's risk it.
So we started playing covers – Hammerfall, Sentenced, Rammstein, Black
Sabbath. All this combination that makes no sense OK I have nothing
against it, we play all sorts of metal style. In the end we found our style. At
the end of 2008 we had the first concert here in Sibiu. And of course it was
almost a disaster. Imagine he was the only one that had a combo. The
equipment was shitty, the drummer was shitty. He could only play the 2x4
tough punk style. 'I will not play it, because I don't hear you.' we went on
doing the same shit, and then we create out own songs. After awhile... the
drummer was gone, because he went to the university. There is always this
problem with drummers – you can find drummers, but not that play metal.
Everyone plays rock or alternative. Then you say 'play metal but you wont
make any money' no one wants to come. So we found this guy near Sibiu.
We had to buy the cheapest drums we could get In 2009 we started playing
in the north of Românian, which is known for the Hungarian population,
but I felt there was a problem with the vocalist. He didn't have much time –
I wanted to go much for a growling sound. I took the place. From there we
told ourselves we'd not stop rocking until we are getting old. So I'm the
vocalist & rhythm....”
“Why do you feel passionate about this music?
“This music represents us. From its harsh sound to its growling
attitude, everything is a part of us. I don't imagine ourselves playing
something else, this type of music is what defines us.”
 69

“Tell me about the Românian music scene and how it is being a

metal band here.”
“The Românian music scene is the product of mediocrity – it is a
cheap copy of the American mainstream music scene. The only difference
is the language used in the lyrics and the Balkan attitude. Visually the
scene is represented by fancy cars, tuned girls and bad boys but somehow
kitschy. A metal band has no place in this scene. First of all because metal
as a whole cultural thing is not accepted or understood by most of the
Românians. Second, why would somebody listen to screams along
aggressive or depressive music when he is bombarded daily with fake
sounds of a imaginary good life?”
“What Românian metal bands should readers check out?”
“Loudrage, Target, Dirty Shirt, Taine, Cap de Craniu, Negura
Bunget, Altar, Krepuskul...”
“What are some stereotypes or ideas people have about România
that are either true or untrue?”
“Românians = gypsies is untrue. Is România is a garbage disposal
pit for the European industry? Partly True. Are Românians beggars?
Untrue. România is a corrupted state? True. România is the scum of
Europe? Partly true. Haha.”
“What is the message of the band?”
“We don't have a general message and we tried not to sing about
social problems. Each song has its own theme from fantasy or occult ideas
to WWII depicted images or personal profound experiences.”
“What is something strange that happened to you and when you
tell people they think you are making it up?”
“I have experienced a Succubus appearance. In other words I felt
the touch of a ghostly female entity while I was half awaken. I am
 70

convinced that the whole experience was the result of my mind, a very
strong dream in its own. So I decided to recreate it in a song called
'Hunting Ghosts.'”
“What was it like living through the transition from
communism?”
“We are still living in a transition. I believe it's a continuous
transition to nowhere. I feel that the nowadays trend in the whole World is
the transition. It's like a perception change so that the people would lose
their confidence in order to be easy manipulated. There is no order, just a
daily chaos in which you strive to survive.”
“What are the major differences between areas in your country.
Like the mentality in Bucharest vs Transylvania vs Moldavia, etc?”
“Bucharest is the capital of România, a city full of egocentric
people. Bucharest is their homeland, and not the entire country. The
Moldavian mentality is rooted in an ancestral past where their leader is still
Stefan cel Mare also known as Stephen III of Moldavia. Churches are their
source of vitality and they still have a Russian accent due to the
communistic Russian occupation after the WWII. On the good side they
have great food and easy women. Transylvania is a mixture of German
Saxons, Hungarians, Moldavians, and Oltenians all gathered here for a
better living. This part of the country was very influenced by the
Austrian/Hungarian Empire, from the economic to the cultural point of
view. While the rest of the country was forced into internal warfare, this
part flourished with the help of foreign support. Today Transylvania stands
out as a reformatory territory, an example of Românian good life...”

***I arrived in Brasov the next afternoon at a very communist looking bus
station. Black mountains ranged the distance, and the buildings were those
 71

gray Soviet blocks that towered like tombstones around the shambling city.
I was far from the tourist centre, if there even was one. I immediately
headed to the public bus and was dropped 2km from another bus station.
Here, all the tours departed to Castle Dracula.
I climbed aboard a rickety bus with air fresheners stapled all over
the ceiling. As we drove, they dangled like a Christmas Tree that's
ornaments affected by vicious earthquake.
I spent the day at Bran castle, which may or may not have had
Vlad Tepes as a prisoner in the basement at one point in history. It was all
marketing, assuredly, but it was still epic in it's own right. Far smaller and
less haunting then I'd imagined it to be, but it was clear that when Bram
Stoker came here once upon a time he harnessed its vibe and imagery as
the basis for his legendary Dracula novel. I was thrilled to have stomped its
domain.
I returned to Brasov and made The Black Church. Dating back to
the 13th century, this is the apex of that Old World cathedral that a guy like
Van Helsing would fight satanic creatures on the roof of.
This is where the villagers would huddle in the medieval Dark
Ages, harnessing the energy of countless ceremonies. So much history, so
much human reality – it just seeped through it. But the building was
inherently cold & basement-like. It must have been a tomb in the dead of
winter on those sermons of the Unenlightened Ages.
I realized it was now 9/11, and what a strange juxtaposition to find
myself here 12 years later! I really don't know how many Americans think
in this manner, but for me there is only the world before and the WTC. No
use going on a conspiracy rant, because I feel the proof is in the pudding.
And no matter how deep you are willing to go down the rabbit
hole or how fringe your possibilities of what really happened might reach,
 72

we all know that it's not so much “fishy” as it is reeking like a

decomposing beached whale.
It took a cab ride to reach Rockstadt Club, the premiere metal/rock
bar of Brasov. The cab driver kept saying “Yeah Barack Obama Number 1,
America Number 1!!” and I kept saying “no, no – România number 1 –
Barack Obama criminal, he is criminal.”
But I do not think the word “criminal” translated. He just smiled
and replied: “oh, oh... George Bush number 1, George Bush number 1!!!”
This guy knew what it meant to be a taxi driver – anything for a solid tip.
I reached Rockstadt and soon Alinescu from the diverse,multie-
genre metal band Deliver the God met me. He was in a cheerful mood
because at midnight it was his birthday: “Please excuse my English, haha.
The music has a long history – I've been playing since 1992, but in 2009
we started this band Deliver The God. It's just hobby; its our passion. We
cannot and do not make money out of it. Why? First of all, it's România.
Music is complicated for people everywhere, but I think especially for
Românians. Second, we are not very young. I will be 36 tomorrow, the
other guys are 35, 34. I look at the kids today and they had all the good
gear, and we couldn't have that then. We started a little late. We get around
and said can we do this for hobby. Can we accept that we do this for our
pleasure, and expect nothing more? Because if our expectations are low
then our karma will be OK, our harmony. We just want to crate the music
we like, and that's it. Our success comes from the heart. Id someone thinks
that we deserve some money or something, its rather OK, but its passion
and that's why we continue. And the feedback from the people, from
friends and strangers that come to our shows, it's excellent. And that's
great. That's what gives us the power to continue. So we played from 2009,
I think around 60 or 70 shows around România and never had negative
 73

feedback. Hell breaks loose at our concerts – stage diving, circle pits, wall
of death. I mean I can play technical shit, complicated stuff, but that's not
the point – the audience is the point. I think we found the recipe that moves
the audience and that's everything we need.
“What is the message of Deliver The God?”
“Our vocalist should be here, haha. Its about life experiences,
about religion, but not in the satanic way or something – but in a rather
hidden message, its not a very direct message. Something like fuck church
or something. Its rather philosophical, arising more questions then answers.
So it's about life, feelings, fears. Its not political, not social. More personal
stuff because our vocalist makes the lyrics, its his parts. Its not something
you figure out at first.”
“Tell me about music scene in România.”
“It's rather complicated – what I can say is the metal scene has
grown a lot. Its growing my maturity, all the bands invest a lot in gear.
There are a lot of bands that are coming into he light. A lot of young bands
and that's great. They evolve wit their technical skills, their musical
conceptions, of course you cannot reinvent the wheel but every band has a
unique DNA. I'm against this band is better then that band because you
cannot compare because each is unique.”
“When traveling, România has been a mystery...”
“There are some issues here – Dracula, vampires, that stuff. I think
its marketing. If someone says come to România see this Dracula stuff, its
worth once in a lifetime to see. But its mostly marketing. Its OK, because
everything is business. But after that its the stuff with the gypsies, that
thing.”
“I've heard a lot of stuff, problem people don't want to sound
racist, but I know stereotypes do exist and this is usually...”
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“I think this is the biggest problem because they media is talking

about the issues with the gypsy and that somehow puts a label on all of us,
on our nation,. And its not like that because every nation has it's gypsy
people. There are a lot of good people here as well as every country in the
world and there are some bad segment of the population that wouldst make
our nation proud. But its not like that. I had a friend that came from sewed
where everybody is white and blond, and he was here at this table, and we
start6ed talking, having a beer. And he said oh you know I was very afraid
coming here cause the gypsy the media talking about how dangerous your
country is, violence, whatever, and I came here and I found beautiful
people, beautiful country. Its distorted. A distorted image, I think these are
the two issues. Also people would be surprised because we a re a farm
country – horses, cows, all this. Its like 50 years behind or something, and
this way of living of ours is very surprising for many people. I know many
tourists come here exactly for that they want to feel those 50 years back,.
That clear water. Now if we take different regions – i think every region
has something to show. Transylvania has a lot of history, castles,.
Fortresses. Another interesting area is the Danube delta. Then the shore of
the black sea, as well. The northern part, where all the traditions are like
they were hundreds of years ago. Christmas or new years eve, you see the
traditions taking place in the street in the villages, I think this is very
interesting for people to see.”
“I'm curious about the Moldavia country.”
“Well it looks like România but – BUT like architecture,
communistic architecture big blocks of flats. Not much history, historical.
It's rather more modern. The thing is that they are poorer then us. There is
no middle class. Its high class and the poor. And that's all. This is one of
the most astonishing image when you get there, apart form the border
 75

where they check you for visa, everything. Politically speaking, they want
to pace with România. Yes we are Moldavian but we speak Românian , so
its a big political fight to extend our territory with them. Its communist
there, still. There is some kind of democracy, but still communism. Its like
Russia or something, that kind of stuff.”
“You lived through the change of communism...”
“Well I was very young at the time, 13 during the revolution in
1989. its a long story a lot to speak here. After the revolution there was
some opportunities. Politically speaking nothing changes because the
people cont8inued to rule somehow and took he opportunities – financial
stuff, all the smart guys took advantage of the chaos and build their
business, stole things, you know? They increased the gap between the high
class and the poor class. And that was some years... now I think it changes.
Because it started to show a middle class somehow. I guess they settled
somehow. We say we are poor but I wanted say exactly that,. Of course
there are many poor, people who worked 20 or 30 years and got nothing
for their pension. But besides that now its some kind of balance. There are
problems with the politicians like every country. With this protest here, I
think its a kind of manipulation, its too easy that those were in the streets
20,000 people with riot there had some kind victory, because our prime
minister said that the project its stopped with the gold and cyanide. But I
think he will for sure run for presidency and if he makes this move now, to
say to the people you asked for your tights, well I stopped the project, so
when I run for president you should elect me. I am sure that every
politician will think for himself, his group of interests. So don't tell me that
this move is for the people because it isn't so. After all this, it was a bad
time after revolution. It was chaos. But now it's rather stabilized and we are
somewhat progressing.”
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“Is it extremely hard for people to get into politics?”

“No, not really. Judging by my friend – everybody is getting in a
party, into politics. People younger then me are getting into the senate.
What the fuck? I know a singer from a band that is now running for senate.
You pull strings, you know some people, and in a few years, you get to the
bone. Its not about the money, it's who you know.”
“Bucharest?”
“Personally I don't like Bucharest. Because its very crowded...
Starting Brasov to west, we have some kind of thing against them. Wee see
them as the capitol,. We see them – we are from Bucharest. And you are
from the country. You know? Its still this kind of thinking and we don't
enjoy that. And there were some kind of wars between the country and
Bucharest. I was living in Bucharest two years, and I couldn't
accommodate with the living. I took the bus from where I was staying to
work and I was spending 3 hours of the day of my life just on the bus.
What is that? It does have its beautiful things, some great historical
buildings – its the capitol. But I wont live there. But you should go to see
it, its like 3 million people or something.”
“What's a totally bizarre story you tell people that happened to
you and everyone thinks you're lying when you try and explain it...”
“There is one, a small one. I was studying in Cluj for two years –
geography, whatever, tourist industry – and at that time I was a big fan of
martial arts. I studied a lot – I also had a small school of martial arts. I was
studying the art of ninja. And in this art of ninja there are some meditation
things, there are stuff you do with your fingers and you meditate and you
feel your body is going somewhere, you feel crazy stuff, they say.. Its
called tantra yoga, stuff like that. In one I was in the bathroom, in the
bathtub, and I open the tap with warm water. I went in lying in my back
 77

and I waited for the tap to fill,. And I started to do this tantra stuff and I
was freeing my mind, I wasn't thinking of anything – it's a process, you get
through, to get that state of mind, I remember that it seemed to me that is
passed 5 or 6 seconds but when I open my eyes the water was to my neck.
And I was scared of that. This, I think was the weirdest thing to me. But it
happened. It was very strange, the strangest of my life. Missing time or
something”
“Do you have a question for me about the USA?”
“Yeah, is it really happening – that stuff like going on vacation
with some friends in a van, taking a left turn and reaching the remote small
village with the small gas station with an old man that is picking his noise
and after that what happens is Texas chainsaw massacre? Is that shit really
happening there? Haha.”
“That's what we think about România, hahaha...”
“Hahaha, yeah like 'Hostel.' That kind of stuff, I think is real. But
like Moldova, Ukraine. Like the movie where they go to Brazil but are
hunted for liver, for kidneys, whatever...

I parted ways with the smiling Alinesku and made my way to the hostel
he'd arranged for my broke ass. In the night, the dim corridors of Brasov
seemed menacing, but any shadowy figure that passed flashed a smile.
There were no lurking strangers here, it seemed. I
crawled atop the bunk bed and lay awake staring at the white
ceiling still bright in the heavy darkness. It would be many months, if not
years, before I fully understood the impact of this Românian trip. It was a
strange land to confront, and one of beautiful terrain.
Nearly everything I assumed or heard was at least partially true,
but no traveler I met accurately entailed the character of the Românian
 78

people. Even the “gypsies” that populate it's fringe are obscured. Western
and Northern Europe broadcasts this stereotype that România is somehow
a land ripe with missing teeth, violent poverty, flesh starved wild dogs,
pick pockets, Russian gangsters & such nonsense. It is a shame this
majestic land of intensity is dismissed so frequently.
It is a level of insipid fear broadcast from the west such as
American media does to Cuba, Mexico, Latin America at large. Life is not
“cheap” in România – it flourishes. It may be economically strangled and
treated like the unwanted child of the EU, but it is a people versed to
community, even if that sense of community is enveloped by rural Old
World platitudes.
Even if they are behind in technology, fashion, bureaucratic
organization – there still beats a great heart that thunders if you are apt
enough to catch it's pulse.
To some, this pulse is silent; for others, it roars like a tiger. All one
must do is put a careful ear to the ground and reappraise what it means to
be a simple human stripped of the flashing television set and instead
imbued with the rich soil of the earth...

***Days later, resting on a park bench in Budapest. I had toyed with the
idea of heading to Bucharest, but the attitude towards it from those in
Transylvania defeated the impulse.
I ended up taking a series of mini vans to Targu Mures, where I
caught a lucky return bus to Budapest for €20. The ride with thunder and
rain all night, 12 straight hours of driving through lands that reminded me
of the Pennsylvania countryside.
 79

Maybe it was just the best of George Thorogood comp on my

headphones. I felt like we were all truckers zooming through Nevada on
that slick black road.
I was back in Hungary though, and I'd have to make it towards
Belgium in the next few days. It was one leviathan of a distance to
hitchhike and very little English along the way.
Perhaps it was OK to just pay for a bus back to Brussels, or as
close as I could for as cheap as I could. Just be a tourist for once. Spend a
little money. Get wine drunk and lay in the sun. Just read a book in the
shade for once, and not kill myself attempting to write one.
Today the sky is clear, and the calm weather a pleasant 20 Celsius.
Kids play soccer in the field, and two teenage girls smoke a joint behind a
tree trying to look inconspicuous, even if any trained eye can spot their
behavior from a kilometer away.
They nervously look around for cops the way cannabis amateurs
do, hoofing huge lung intakes of that crappy Eastern European marijuana
which is on par with Mexican brick weed. They snuff out the jibber, hide it
next to a tree stump and dart off.
I wait a minute, survey the scene, then head over and pick it from
the ground like a freshly dropped orange. Even if it's a bile vomit color of
pea-green, the dirt weed is still stickier then the floor of a jack shack. I roll
it's remains into a spliff then wander through the park. Like a long lost
slobbering dog, my stoned mind frame finds me again.
I walk the busy streets packed with tourists, most of them German.
Everyone here is on a final vacation push before the weather turns sour
again next week.
I'm am at the epicenter of Summer's finale, and I still have 3½
weeks before my plane leaves. I am rapidly running out of cash too, but I'll
 80

make it – or simply pop a tent on the floor of the Belgian airport and live
there like a caveman for a week.
As the tourists pass, I reach an odd fulfillment. I have lived out the
final chapter of my European journalism mission. As it stands, I have spent
nearly 9 months over a 3 year span wandering Europe.
I could go anywhere, but I'd already traveled to every city and
territory I ever set out to. I now know their sprawling continent then
probably half the population living on it.
True, I got screwed out of Greece and a little more Spain action
would've been nice – maybe a weird week in Belarus or Latvia – but
Budapest was the last big fish to catch. I was left again with the
hyperactive tourists snapping photos, having their naughty sex capitol
drunken night or their drunken getaway.
It was all said & done, and I felt like I'd reached the final level of a
video game where you defeat the ultimate villain but once he drops dead
nothing happens – you are just stuck piloting around a character with a
joystick and no credits or animation comes on screen.
I really had no idea what to do with myself. In conquering my
journey across The Atlantic, I defeated my main reason to live, to work, to
struggle for that mysterious payoff. Europe was played out. I was tired and
it was time to go back to playing music.
I headed back to the bench and there was a younger guy with
bright blue eyes sitting in my previous spot. He had a weird energy about
him, a sort of mega-fulfillment going on that I could sense.
I asked to bum a smoke, but he said he quit years ago – in an
American accent. I kicked up a conversation with him that he seemed to
want out of, only because he was waiting for something.
 81

He was from the Midwest too, some nowhere town in Minnesota.

He too had traveled far and wide like me. Spent a lot of time trying to get
out, same as me. Said he would never, ever have to go back. That he was
waiting on someone to meet him and they were going to leave Budapest
that night and go live in Sweden.
I reached into my pocket to fish out one of my promo fliers for the
book, but before I could even tell him who I was or what I did, he said
“sorry, sorry – I have to take this.”
He veers his eyes to the left, gets up with a once in a lifetime
smile, and starts walking towards someone. I turn my head, and there she
is. Beautiful Swedish girl, bright blue eyes – his eyes looking back from
another body. He walks past me in a delighted haze, leaving both myself
and his American past completely behind.
As he gets closer and closer to this mysterious, gorgeous Swedish
girl, I watch her eyes well up, almost with tears. He glides right into her,
and they share a passionate kiss that somewhere, in some locked room in
the fabric of space and time is photo developed by Cupid and placed
among the 1000 greatest kisses in human history.
Whoever he was, American guy gets his European dream girl &
Captain Minnesota gets his green card. They embrace for an intense 30
seconds, pull apart, walk off hand in hand into the sunset.
I plop back down onto the bench with my twisted, aching, disc
ruptured spine & all my flimsy gray little Xerox copy fliers made to push a
book that the majority of people in Europe can't even read.
Me & my crazy little mission, a phone that never rings with a
lonely voice, barely a dime of life savings & no one coming to this quiet
Hungarian park to take me hand in hand to the promised land.
 82

And then I laughed – I laughed, I laughed, I laughed. I arose from

my seat, and drifted back into the tourist herds leaving a little moat of
discarded gray fliers around the bench. I no longer felt the need to promote
anything.
Budapest was waiting with it's cheap beer & €3 dinner plates &
thermal baths & raging nightclubs & gypsies selling piles of broken
appliances & stained clothing in lumps on the streets. And somewhere in
that sprawling mix of ant people, I knew I could find the solution to my
new priority. Somewhere out there were blue eyes for me too.
It's great to be infamous among the antisocial, socially awkward,
misanthropic teenager demographic. But you know what? They won't hand
you a cup of coffee in the morning or wash your socks when your not
home... And if that's all a pipe dream my friends... well, then... there's
always South America...

xXx
Dr. Ryan Bartek // 2.23.14
 83

RETURN TO FORTRESS EUROPE

ψυχῆς ἰατρεῖον (Part III: Greece 2012)
Dodging the army of Deutsch cops, riot squads & army special forces was
easier then expected. Lugging a travel pack like a tortoise human when
trying to sneak by them may have been a red flag, but I was still a 31 year
old Aryan-passing honky with all my teeth. Camouflaged in a business
suit, I looked an inconspicuous German rushing off to some corporate
business meeting...
The green suited paramilitary troopers at the train station were
arresting or ticketing any protesters that were part of the attempted
blockade at the World Bank. I could easily plead “ignorant tourist.”
It was a long, beaded sweat walk past grim police, army guys and
cop dogs before I nonchalantly slipped on the train headed for the airport, I
was finally free of Frankfurt Am Main & forced deportation. Again I was
that Detroit runaway, seeing just how far I could take it.
I boarded the aircraft & launched, aerially soaring towards Athens
like some Homerian legend. Greece had always been a target in my
European travels. I’d been obsessed with it’s mythology as a child, and
always felt akin to it’s people whenever I met them. There was something
deeply centered in their attitude that coalesced with mine.
My interest in Greece had nothing to do with beaches or islands; it
was the vibe these people gave out. The problem was I never found any
cheap method of getting there. Europe had this glorious yet utterly
annoying issue where each country looked at itself as it's own reality, and
what may only be an hour drive to the next country is for locals an exotic
land. I never understood how a Dutch adult could never have stepped foot
in Belgium, or an Eastern German never once crossed into Poland. Even
 84

the most well-traveled European generally looked at România, Ukraine &

Croatia as distant as Tibet.
Thus, Greece was the most notorious in it's separation. Practically
speaking, it had no business even being in the EU. The only reason it got in
was because it’s strategic importance & trade routes.
Northern countries wanted to suck 'em dry like a mosquito & the
corrupt politicians of Greece reeled them in by “cooking the books.” The
Greek Gov. intentionally lied about their finances as to bludgeon their way
in. They were economically blobbed together now.
It was an obscure land that no one anywhere had ever seemed to
been to, and even if they had it was some island for a week. It was cut off
by the Balkans which were difficult & dicey to hitch-hike.
Flights were expensive unless booked far in advance from Milan
or Copenhagen. Eurolines buses of tourist-heavy Western Europe halted at
Budapest. All international train service had been cut to it, and most of
Greece was a desert such as Portugal or Spain.
I'd spammed every travel forum & rideshare site trying to hustle a
cheap ride, but one never came. The only cheap way was to get to
Budapest then hitchhike through the dauntingly unnerving Serbia, through
unfriendly Kosovo & finally freaky Macedonia. Not exactly fun, and likely
to dish out the same amount of cash along the way in areas unfriendly to
hitchhikers – especially Americans. Airfare it was.
These days 2012, Greece was a consistent topic in any discussion
on the future of the EU. The country was bankrupt beyond salvage –
internally rotted from thieving politicians, vulture corporations &
horrifically bad management. It was the millstone around the neck of The
EU.
 85

All the nationalized industries were sold off or privatized to the

highest bidder, and Greece was stripped of self-sustainment. It then
foolishly became a “Permanent Tourism Economy” – a realm of fancy
beach resorts, pay-to-see ancient ruins & high-end restaurants overlooking
the Acropolis. This was economic self-murder, of course, but no one
realized the tangled web of doom that had been built around the Greek
people by the classically sleazy forces of old.
So when the economic collapse of 2008 came, the wobbly
structure crashed. No one in the more developed Euro countries – let alone
Canadians or Americas – had money to throw around drunk on the beach.
“Party Land” dried up, and so did the funds.
And then came the million man riots. The Greeks were now in a
state of constant revolt, a sort of Cold Civil War. In media worldwide,
images of burning cop cars and tear gas fogs coursed through the
consciousness of the press. The financial observers knew the only game
left to be played was “kick the can.”
The IMF, World Bank & EU hierarchy knew the situation was
damned, and all they had to offer was brutal austerity measures and
criminal loans at soaring interest the Greeks had no possible way of
clawing their way out of. The only question is how long that game could
endure, and how nasty the implosion would be...

And so there I was, May of 2012, willingly flying into this hazardous
inferno to live in the alleyways among the beggars and the most dejected. I
sought the pulse of Occupy & had little interest in the touristy sections
except as a fall-back safe zone of anonymity.
I was wary of the squats, who unlike the more politically correct &
organized Northern European variety were more ramshackle and desperate.
 86

I was supportive, no question. But I did not want to be deported for being
in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Currently they were engaged in running street battles with The
Golden Dawn, the ultra-nationalist Neo-Fascist party now prominent in the
Greek political & social debate. The fascists were on the rise, marching in
jackboots, carrying torches & waving creepy occult-laced banners
spreading the message of xenophobia.
They were becoming an ominous force of intimidation, attacking
migrant workers and illegal aliens under the cover of night. Things had
gotten so bad people were starting to take them seriously. I knew I could
very well be targeted with my style of urban camping.

Even though the flight was under 2 hours, my belly was full. Nothing
could represent more starkly the contrast between American and EU life
then airplane luxury. Even as bottom-barrel 3rd class I'd been served lunch
& dinner for free – with red wine & citrus sodas.
Grinning from my cushy notion of vacation, the airspace cleared
the fluffy clouds giving way to a descent that was miraculous. Like a
Pegasus above an enchanting realm of dreams (and there is no phrase
more precise, no matter how cliché it may ring in the ears), my vision
hovered above waters shimmering like turquoise.
The sands were whiter then cocaine on the shore, slowly blending
into the outer rims of rugged, rocky terrain that over length grew a dark
brown such as dried compacted mud. Every rock seemed a diminutive,
majestic mountain. When the buildings began to coagulate it seemed the
kind of housing slop stretching across Mexico City. Yet oddly, they
seemed utterly appropriate, as if part of a natural formation.
 87

From the height I soared they looked like grains of dry oatmeal
that tumbled from a rip in a mammoth packet of Quacker Oats belonging
to a careless, half-wakened giant stumbling around a behemoth kitchen
shoddily attempting to prepare them before the rush hour drive to work.
As the plane descended, the reality of what I was doing hit me
hard. What in Sam Hell was I really doing here? Once again I’d be thrust
into the stream of an exotic, dicey country where I spoke not a word of it's
native language. I didn't know anyone here on a personal level, and I didn't
even bother to look at a map.
Well, why should I? It only spoils the adventure because it's vastly
more entertaining to be a wayward pirate navigating some perilous
situation. But perhaps – just perhaps – this time I really bit off more then I
could chew. This wasn't Holland, after all. Shit, it wasn’t even Detroit. By
nightfall, rubber bullets could be a-flyin’.
Best case I’d be talking like John McClane, cursing myself for not
quitting smoking when trying to outrun tear-gassing, flash banging, stick-
bashing Darth Vader cops. Athens could be the death of me, for real this
time... and then the plane hit the runway, and ground to a halt.
As I gazed about for the reputed signs of decay, the airports central
building seemed functional enough with high ceilings and a carpet fit for a
Marriot hotel. I ran into some leather jacket clad metal guys – most likely a
famous band not willing to exactly say who they were, both with the shifty
eyes of elitist black metal.
I unloaded some flyers on them for my Fortress Europe book with
a smile, and when reading the laundry list of KVLT names printed on them
they looked even more puzzled.
The very non-metal looking guy in the blue suit coat, tie & fedora
is running around Europe hanging out with extreme metal bands? Just who
 88

in the bloody hell is this fast-talking, weirdly animated lunatic? I did a snap
of the fingers & pointed at 'em with a crazy grin: “Hey... Smile.”
I caught the cheapest public bus I could find and headed straight
for Syntagma Square, down a highway flanked by barren desert and jagged
mountains such as cracked pottery.
It looked like a spaghetti western, if not for the purple lotus-like
flowers alongside the highway & the giant cinder block rectangle of a Best
Buy store. This American franchise seemed an odd placement, like a
bizarre flag planted on a deep space moon & NASA never to return. US
capitalism knows no boundaries, let alone the ancient world!
Soon we were on a freeway, flanked by modern automobiles. We
rolled into the outskirts of Athens around 5pm, as the sun was beginning to
set like a peculiarly hued auburn fireball.
The buildings began looking freakish – everything was for sale or
lease. Tacky used car lots were dried up and empty as the desert; those
frilly sparkly tangles dangled in the wind alluring ghost customers to
empty concrete.
Even the banks were abandoned and up for lease. The buildings
grew more deranged – every 3 was burned out from a Molotov fireball.
Suddenly, the bullet-sweating bus halted for a traffic jam. I looked
about & no passenger was phased. Traditional Greek music started roaring
from carried speakers in the distance, like patriotic anthems. I could hear
the thumping of war drums, loud as the foot steps of a lumbering colossus.
A huge column of protesters emerged, having shut down all traffic.
I expected the likes of a black bloc, perhaps rowdy anarchists or even the
fearsome Golden Dawn. What emerged instead were legions of average
people, and many elderly.
 89

Just people. Everyone was smiling and peaceful, singing and

clapping hands. They looked hungry and tired, but they were fueled by the
never-say-die Greek spirit.
The crowd dispersed and we rolled onward, deeper into the coming
labyrinth. If a building were not scarred by fire then it was up for sale or
lease. Some looked vacated during a barbarian onslaught, left in haste to
maniacs launching fireballs through primitive cannons.
A high speeding motorcyclist with a reflective lens zoomed in
front of the bus, and in the driver’s eyes came the urge to chase him. The
driver sped up, as if playing a silent reverse game of chicken in a war rig.
The speedster shot out of view, and the driver pulled into the roundabout at
Syntagma Square in cheerful mute victory.
I hopped out with the buzz of the city cascading about me. I was
an astronaut of a world that could not be compared to American soil by any
means, let alone the whole of Northern Europe, Italia or even Spain. I took
a deep breath of this Mediterranean air polluted by bus exhaust & darted
up the concrete stairs ahead.
Atop I was greeted by an elderly Greek man, clothed in a three
piece suit. He’d a large silver crucifix dangling off a gold chain as if a rural
Transylvanian, selling trinkets and incense. To his sides, humans rushed
along the sidewalk headed towards the tourist trap. The other direction led
downtown.
The old man was like a weather vane, a surreal compass point for
me where my understanding of Greece, as a center, was firmly planted.
East/West/North/South, for the hole of the country, was determined right
there forever. To his left the trail of modern financial district ruin, to his
right the heart of the Old World (Monastiraki Square). To his south the
beaches of legend, to his north endless desert.
 90

With gray hair like strings haphazardly combed over his shining
baldness, the skinny old man with the big nose smiled down to me.
Assuredly I expected he wanted money, but he stopped me to say I
reminded him of his son. Because the way I walk, way I carry myself, the
curiousness I let off gazing around computing my surroundings.
Asked if it is my first time in Greece, said he just liked to greet
incomers, because he liked to meet new people. Talked about Detroit,
talked about Chicago. He explained the direction to Monastiraki, the
ancient vital center where upon The Acropolis looks down from the
horizon. He pointed the way, wished me well, and never asked for a dime.
The desperation for it did not even well up in his eye. He actually just
wanted to talk to me.
Even if he was too bashful to ask for money as a matter of pride
this restrain was something so removed from American interaction I was
convinced I’d discovered a race of heroes I could barely fathom. I waved
goodbye to my initial contact, feeling like an adventurer crossing paths
with the native of a remote tribe.
Within a few blocks I walked into Monastiraki – the ancient public
square that was eternally the main pulse of Athens’ “Street World.” With
it’s immediate edges revamped into neon storefronts, the bizarrely rock-
tiled ground led to stone alleyways cramped through a zig zag cluster of
Old World buildings, all of which beset a mad labyrinth that mirrored the
ancient bazaars of Turkey & Egypt.
The very power of this place was indescribable; it felt like a
chamber of souls locked into time, just hovering eternal in a gleeful
vacuum, where the tramps & drifters & street urchins of history had found
the center of their world and upon dying refused “the white light” to
remain earthbound ghosts, pleasantly locked in infinitude at this eternal
 91

city square which shall remain forever so long as Greece stays unmolested
by an invading external war. If the Athenians had a god of The Hobo, the
rock benches currently crowded by screw-loose & starving would no doubt
have been his altar.
Atop the roofs of building clusters on the horizon lay a craggly
mountain of sharp rocks like a frozen tsunami. At it’s top the ruins of The
Acropolis. The atmosphere was so dense with power, mystery, brutality,
ecstasy, that in a few slight heartbeats the world I knew was undone. What
record I could offer beyond stunned paralysis was the feeling of opening a
book that's words were of magmic calligraphy.
I stared into Greece, infinite Greece, unsure where I as a mere
observer now placed in its majestic tapestry. I had never been to a place so
thoroughly intense that I had no other course of action but to immediately
go to sleep.
Even emerging into New York City that first time, rising from the
subway of downtown Manhattan and being thrust into 20 kilometers of
skyscrapers did not compare. Without being able to grasp its content, or
even able to interpret the feeling, at Monastiraki I absorbed the beginning
and the end of time. My eyes were lanterns, my existence dwarfed. I was
bewildered.
I felt the smartest thing to do was set up a few interviews with my
contacts – Nikos from Convixion (thrashy classic heavy metal), Sakis
Fragos (editor of Rock Hard Magazine and former executive producer of
MTV Headbanger’s Ball Greece) & Paminos from After Dusk (a melodic
thrashy power metal band).
I went for the telephone booth but it was this strange orange
bubble, like a set piece from a 1960‘s British TV show. It did not take
money, just some weird card. The man at the nearby newspaper stand
 92

explained that SIM cards do not exist in Greece – they all had to buy mini
pre-paid cards. Cell phones were still new & generally foreign!
I had 5 days in Athens before Milan. I would then spend a week
and a half in Italy, then to Barcelona, then to Lisbon to meet the black
metal band Corpus Christii. But here I was, 5 days in this unknown
powerhouse which was equally terrifying as it was exhilarating.
A huge part of me had wished I’d just cut the chord and wandered
off into the larger country. It was certainly cheaper then most of Europe,
rained very little, and was ripe to sleep outside wherever I could get away
with it. Brimming with rocky white coast line, it was a tourist dreamland
for those who had the money to throw around.
Outside of it, who knows? Certainly I wanted to. It was the sort of
country where even if you do wind up alone in a hostile environment and
refuse to pay the $$$ for a hostel the sheer intensity of that country keeps
you up all night and you have no choice but to keep going on like a
hypnotized marionette through it’s nocturnal consumption.
The Greek night is the mother’s milk of bipolar manic. Here the
adventurer is a surrender, gleefully waving the white flag such as a
madman. Utterly intoxicating, it had devoured the daylight; the pulse of the
city was throbbing like one big central nerve.
Fighting the urge to sleep was useless; the swarma sandwich had
filled my belly, the tourists were swarming, and I needed to hibernate. I
knew that only by wrapping myself up in a tarp cocoon & going under
would let the visuals & emotions compartmentalize.
Without an adequate reset, I was crippled. I crawled through the
shop frenzy maze and into a seemingly dirty section of New York, kind of
like a Brooklyn with graffiti on 1950‘s apartment buildings. Into a dark
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alleyway I glided, unfurling my bum-o-flauge to safely become the plastic

burrito person I was accustomed. I went out like a light.

***The recollection of dreams never have a clear starting point – one is

just thrust into a subconscious situation. While my body may have been in
a Greek alley, whatever else of me was 23 again, clocking off work from
my old miserable porter gig.
Those days were exhausting, running around the length of a
football field at a Ford Dealership, hopping into burning enclosed metal
boxes of automobiles that'd been parked for days under the summer sun.
I’d jet to the front with a vehicle, give the keys to it’s owner, then run out
again to fry my skin on the next leather griddle.
Well, in the dream I clocked off work, then went home. My
girlfriend who once lived with me was nowhere to be found, and I vaguely
realized I was dreaming, because in actuality we had broken up long before
I ever took that job.
Still, I went out driving looking for a metal show at a dive bar that
did not exist except in my dream, with bands I could not name because
they too were a figment.
It was night, so late that I was sleepy even in sleep wondering how
I would be able to do the automotive shuffle with 3 hours of rest. I thought:
“Who cares? I’m a young man. I will never remember being tired, only the
actions of the day itself.”
It was the line I always repeated to myself when battling fatigue in
order to catch some death metal gig going until 2am even though I had to
be at work 7am the next morning.
I entered the bar with it’s freaky neon marquis fit with clown faces
– perhaps a mutated slumber rendition of Portland’s Avalon Theater. The
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bartender was cleaning out empty glasses with a rag; he told me all the
bands had canceled.
The tavern was empty except for one lone figure hunched over the
bar top, drinking on a stool and gazing emptily at a TV above a row of
hard liquor bottles.
I approached him but first looked to the screen – the Republican
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney was on the television, dressed as a
surgeon with a purple surgical mask, operating on a mans slit open
stomach, as if an awful gastrointestinal cable show.
The sad man at the bar turned around and looked at me – it was
Barack Obama, his tie loosened and cuffs rolled up, getting hammered in
disarray. His eyes looked exhausted and empty, as if abandoned. He gave
me this intense look meant to say so much but it was lost on even me. Too
exhausted to even shrug of sigh, he turned his beaten spirit back to the
Romney incision broadcast.
The dampness of my own face awoke me, more so then the
mosquito swarm. I removed the tarp like a crinkly bed sheet and looked to
the roofs of the alley. The moon was bright over the zig-zagged structures,
the sky inching towards dawn and amassing the unseen purple of the night
hue like a vacuum cleaner sucking it all up into a cumulative density.
The thin telephone wires slinging between crooked alley tops were
cluttered with hung shoes; pairs left dangling by grateful travelers. I
headed into the street at pre-dawn.
The first sight that greeted me were Moroccan scrap hoarders
pushing half-broken shopping carts full of any metal they could salvage or
pull from any of the molotov cocktail torched buildings. Just pushing that
cart around ceaselessly, night after night, such as an American homeless
with an overstuffed junk buggy of raw scrap.
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They were even hoarding beer bottle caps. Anything, everything. I

turned a corner for a random direction, emerging into a more industrial
feeling wharf market.
As I walked, the earth felt asleep just as it did in Venice. The roads
were wide, as were the cement blocks making up the sidewalk. They
seemed abnormally large, fit for giants. The only comparable environment
I’d seen was Stockholm, where the old Viking lore seemed present in their
architecture. It felt that if even subconsciously they were paving the roads
to be fit for some mythological king’s return.
Every half block or so was planted a tree with purple flower, such
as a lotus. They were like an absinthe reverie, raining down their night-
mirroring hue to the concrete. A clump of these flowers led my vision to a
bloody ditch.
From the prettiness of the vegetation my vision swung upwards
towards a crimson stream leading from an open garage warehouse where
skinned lambs hung on hooks, Greek butchers ripping out the entrails of
fish while wearing galoshes.
The most disturbing piles of intestinal gore lay on the ground of
the shop, a river of blood seeping out carrying with it the occasional fish
eye or brain matter. It flowed through the cracks of the giant-fitted
walkway slabs, over the ledge into the street and into the sewer dug-outs
enclosed by welded iron bars.
Looking deeper into the long street, half the businesses were
wholesale butcher shops such as the one I just glimpsed. Every few
businesses, streams of blood & gore dribbled grotesquely in the street.
With the city now slowly waking and businesses flicking on their
lights, dawn came suddenly. There was a light purple to the sky with a
slight pink, such as the early AM of New Mexico.
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I returned to Monastiraki; two street crazies were wandering it’s

contours as if a rubber room. In the USA, we would call them tweekers;
here, crystal meth was foreign. Either they were insane long before, both of
them cawing like roosters and nervously talking to thin air, or the
starvation and exhaustion of the Athenian street had taken it’s toll. I looked
to The Acropolis on the horizon, wondering just how many poor chaps
those ruins had cast their mighty shadow upon.
After a brief coffee, I sought out the adventure I aimed to take all
along – even if the sheer immensity of what I saw over a bus ride, a
roundabout, a public square, a few city blocks & an alley was enough to
keep me decoding this marvel for life.
I was almost fearful, as if heading deeper into this labyrinth would
cause me to lose my mind. I felt I’d surpass a tipping point where
everything prior to this adventure would become utterly meaningless, and I
would have no recourse but to plant roots in that filthy alley and make a
life of it. I was already debating hijacking a shopping cart to initiate a
career of scrap metal.
I hit the main street which opened up a view comparable to a
quaint road in Brooklyn. On the corner was an old man selling hoagie
sandwiches out of a cart for €1, stuffed with turkey, cream cheese &
tomatoes. It was easily the finest tasting sandwich I’d had in all of my
Euro travels thus far. I bought a second, then proceeded.
It was instantly clear that Athens, and most likely Greece at large,
was a mans world. There seemed only to be four businesses outside of food
– all of which repeated themselves over & over on my stroll. First was a
navy/army surplus store, next a shop for suit & ties, next a tourist trinket
parlor, and then finally a hardware store where the items were threadbare.
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Various hammers and saws hung from the walls off nails, and sawdust
covered the floor.
I passed the shops and the pattern kept repeating – it was like
everything you needed to be a man, over and over, and every one of these
men running the businesses loved to haggle over a price. They all made a
sport of it & I fell into the trap, arguing over the price of things I didn’t
need to own or carry, but felt obliged to purchase just to play along their
tug-of-war. I ended up buying some half-needed items for the travel pack,
and a solid raincoat for €2.
I followed the road towards the more financial-based public sector,
where Athens becomes as Manhattan-like as it does. Just like NYC, there
are newspaper dealers and flea market stands pawning off all matter of
watches, sunglasses, and cheap Turkish made electronics for €1 or €2.
I took a seat on a marble bench & watched the Athenians stumble
to work in their suits & dresses, all of them grim faced by economic peril.
Work, work, work & not a dime for themselves. Yet it felt arcane, like a
Manhattan of the 50‘s with fedora hats abounding.
I walked & walked as the sun beat down. Even in late May it was
feeling the depths of August. No matter where I went that day, on every
corner stood a riot cop in full Darth Vader battle gear gripping a gigantic
Plexiglas riot shield. They were stationary just as a London Palace Guard –
never smiling, never moving – like bizarre statues of flesh placed as
sentient guardians.
The tourists could overlook them because they chose not to see
them; an eyesore of implied brutality. Also buzzing through the crowds
were riot cops on crotch-rocket motorcycles, riding on the sidewalks
themselves, faces shielded by fascistic helmets like Judge Dredd. On some
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of the motorcycles hung younger rookies, gripping steel billy clubs. They
were a reinforced warning not to step out of line.
The tourists largely ignored them, preferring to stay in their head-
trip of trinkets and plentiful food. Yet I could see the hatred gleam from
the eyes of the native shopkeepers and businessmen. It was the kind of
police state tactic exemplified by Iran’s authoritarian elements – zoom-by
crotch-rocket beat downs.
Every young man on the street when wearing plain clothes either
look the stereotypical LA/NYC top fashion or they have cargo & SWAT
pants, pockets everywhere, all sorts of compartments hooked on belts.
They are adventures through & through.
And every young man into rock n roll seemed to own an Iron
Maiden t-shirt. At every turn – Iced Earth, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden. The
Greek metal flame has, as a popular culture, seem to recognize
MANOWAR as far mightier then Metallica.
What a country. It was so thoroughly metal in every regard it
seems bizarre that Sweden gets such recognition as the Euro Metal Mecca.
Music-wise, sure. But in, Sweden it’s usually so damn cold there’s nothing
to do but fuel cabin fever.
In Greece, it’s always August – and they drag one and another into
the street like children over a loose fire hydrant gushing water everywhere.
The Greeks are dancing in the metal as if it showers upon them like
incandescent maniacs; Nordics stand cross-armed and “no nonsense.” Each
man his own deity & the commandment is “shred.”

As the sun set, I found myself again in Monastiraki. I had surrendered to

the passion of the swarma sandwich and was a trash compactor of gnawed
lamb. The street people flooded the square, zipping flashing purple pens
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into the air which drifted down like those distinct lotus leaves. Fitted with a
plastic propeller, they were flicked into the heavens by an attached rubber
band giving spoiled tourist children who want, want, want their battery
operated hypnosis...

It was time to meet my first interview of the trip – Nikos P., guitarist from
the band Convixion. He had told me to trek up to Exarhion Square, which
was the more rock n’ roll oriented square full of restaurants and clubs for
alternative culture.
Even if it was a little slow this night, there were still a motley
bunch encamped in the square like a ramshackle Occupy. They did not
have any sophisticated structures or tents, most likely 'cause the cops had
all torn them down & they couldn’t afford them anyway.
Instead, at the heart of the swarm was a ripped up bed sheet strung
between two poles and secured into the soil. There was the universal
anarchist A, but other slogans in Greek spray painted on. They were like
the Fat Albert kids of the Occupy junkyard.
I sat outside a club named Dr. Feelgood’s that had hair metal
posters on the walls and jammed 80‘s rock on the speakers. Nikos buzzed
up on a motorcycle, pulled off his helmet, and shook my hand. The guy
was full of life, embodying the Greek notion which is an absence of any
resistance to the ebb and flow of life.
Like all Greeks he seemed so thoroughly in the quick of life he had
an almost elemental vibe. What I mean was that same vibe one gets from a
bunch of kids hanging out on the porch steps of an apartment building in
Harlem, or a mob of crusty kids pan-handling some West Coast USA
metropolis.
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The Greeks are permanently “in the street” – a race of permanent

adventurers. This is a mode of being I so inherently grasp onto, and one
which American society so intensely wishes to dismantle for air-
conditioned convenience.
Nikos P., with his smiling exterior, was the kind of guy you could
envision wandering until dawn with a pack of friends, happy to be alive,
sharing a bottle of wine under the full throttle moon...

“Ok, so... how can I start? Here – this is the eye of the tornado. It’s the
Exarhion Square, as it’s called. It’s been a place where all the rock guys
hang out since the 80s, and even earlier. In the 80s it was a very infamous
place – backstabbing stuff, drugs. The good thing is in the last 5 years all
the people that live here took matter in their own hands. I was here when
people took sticks and stuff and they literally kicked the ass of the drug
dealers. They also put some tables in the basketball area so children could
hang out. The last 3 years, the place is way better then it used to be...”
“So, about metal...”
“I did for my school project a documentary about the metal scene
here. If i can say something – during the 80s, you know, people here – how
can I say... more ‘rebel.’ They used heavy metal and rock music as a way
to express their ideas. It used to be great but the Hellenic metal scene – not
so many bands, problems with production values of the albums not so
good... During the 90s – ok, I am 28 years old, and I feel as a part of the
scene, the last 12 years – especially from November ‘99, Athens was a
great place for heavy metal. We used to have many record shops, many
live stages. You know, you could easily make a gig. We used to have a
heavy metal club, like 500 people always inside. So also thrash metal, this
club over here. Sleaze or hard rock, you go here. Traditional, here. Heavy
 101

Metal became very popular again, especially the younger ages, especially
16-20 with all that 80s outfit, you know? I don’t want to sound like an elite
guy, but I knew it as just-a trendy stuff. A bubble about to pop, you know?
Of course there were many new heavy metal band and most of them did a
demo, some just one album, then they quit. I can say the last 2 years
Hellenic metal rises up again!”
“I’m curious about the economic situation, the new elections.
I’ve read that a new bailout would cause a chain reaction that would
make both Spain and Portugal default on their national credit, since
everyone is linked now by the EU currency...”
“So... it’s all about the money, everything – the fucking money. As
i have it in my mind, my thoughts – the heavy metal scene is a society
inside our society. Let me tell you how I think things work here. In heavy
metal, from the moment I grab a guitar in my hand, every time someone
buys a Convixion album, there is a big chain between me and the guy who
buys the record. Bands, band members aren’t always so friends with each
other. They aren’t really friends, people who share the same feelings.
Everywhere has its problems. I feel music is a way to express it, get the
feeling out. Me and the other 3 guys from Convixion – we go to the
rehearsal room, close the door and leave our problems outside. We do not
face problems inside that room. A lot of bands quit because they aren’t
bound with each other. In Greece, all those years the studios and
productions were very very expensive. Not only expensive – people didn’t
know how to record metal in the 1980s. In the last ten years, the production
levels are way higher. But still even in the 90s people didn’t know how to
mix it or place the microphone. Ok, so i put the money, we record the
demo. we try to find a record label... and i was very lucky in my other band
– we found Greg from Eat Metal records. They begun this record label as
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pure as they could. They said we’re going to find some new bands, help
them with their recording, and all together as a fist we will make rise the
Hellenic metal scene. They helped us pay for the album, we went to
Netherlands and Germany for shows – they made something happen...
Back to studio stuff – in 2004 they could ask 4000 euros, for example.
Let’s say i gave you the 4000 – the production level wasn’t that good. So
bands used to go to Germany or Sweden. for many years the Hellenic
metal scene was not appreciated by the metal press. Ok, so if that guy from
Metal Hammer [magazine] says it, it must be true... There’s this TV show
called ‘TV War’ – it’s more like ‘Headbangers Ball’ in the early years. But
the only heavy metal show on the planet with 13 years in a row. Our latest
release was a 7 inch single and we had a video clip. So the producers saw
that, we got exposure... I think that here in Greece, inside our society the
heavy metal scene is a smaller society. It’s the same people. Something is
that we’re supposed to listen to heavy metal because it’s our way of life.
We are supposed to be thinking that – but the way I see it, the local
organizers, many of them, they try to take as much money as they can from
you. No! OK... we’re going to do a concert with heavy metal band, if we
put €10 interest we’ll have 100 people because they are dying, they would
come no matter what. but if we do the €5 ticket – will we have 200? I have
organized live shows myself and the way i see it is a lower price for many
people. More people is not only more fun – we can all unite. It’s a way to
make the scene stronger. Organizers look for profit – this is how things
work in whole society. This is the problem with Greece – the same people,
the same people that voted all those people in all those years...”
“About the new elections – you had a very left wing party make
many gains...”
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“The people are in a very bad situation, especially my generation

under 30. It’s because our parents – they tried to do the best for their
children and they cared only about their families, not the others. It’s funny
– it’s the dream of every parent for their children to work for the
municipality, the government, some good job, because they will always get
paid. They will have bigger salaries then the rest of us. It was always our
dream. If I work for the government, I will be safe for my life, so I don’t
care about the others. And I have someone on the inside that will help me
get to the top. I think they write about us – we complain now, the last years
– we used to give tons of money for lying people on an island in western
Greece. It came that 90% weren’t even blind, they just took the handicap
money. It’s all about the signature. It’s ok – just send the paper. No one
controls it or sees what is going on. It was so easy to steal the government.
The funny thing is if you ask every single person here – everyone knows
someone stealing from the government. Even today, a friend of mine told
me a very sick story. He’s a guy that's 24 years old – he took a good job
and its to control the people that make roads. His other co workers said
‘Ok, we’ll say €5 million for that road but we’ll just use €2 million. How
do we explain the missing €3 million?’ He spoke to his superiors about the
thieves. He tried to be honest and he was fired! Just like that! A brother of
a friend of mine got fired because he wanted to do the right thing! You’re
fired – end of story! Stories like that – that's why all these people are so
pissed off. You see all those riots and stuff – during 2011 there many riots
and protests, 1 million protesting!”
“Did you have 1 million in the streets?”
“Of course the media will say 500,000, but you could see from the
pictures – all the parliament house was surrounded! Even then, nothing
happened. The funny thing... now everyone is basic salary, everything
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corrupted to the bottom. People changed their minds and voted for little
parties, something else. I believe this is something good, of course a left
wing party took a very big percent. The strange thing is 8% totally right
wing – Golden Dawn, in English. They are right wing extremists, you
know. Fascists, you know. But they also have some of this Hitler stuff.
People voted for them as a way to express their anger. But they are like
cannon balls. Since day one they were bullies. But, you know, exit polls,
opinion polls – they are down to 3%, But even that is enough to get them
into parliament, so i am really curious what will happen in the next
elections. The really funny thing is there’s this website where we can bet
on which party will win. it was exactly as the betting side foretold. Ok, this
will happen – those people know. Just follow the money.”
“In terms of austerity, what got cut?”
“For 12 months you used to get paid for 14 months. Every
Christmas you’d get a whole salary and every Easter half and every
summer the other half of your salary. The first year they cut two of the
salaries. The last year the basic salary was €700 – the least you could get
paid. The most simple thing. Now this went to €500. We’re talking about a
huge cut. They also cut insurance and stuff... another thing – the problem
with immigrants. All the right wing parties say that the biggest problem are
the immigrants. Personally I disagree. I know that there is a problem but if
i compare it to the money the politicians take it is way lower. And many
people believe it’s all the immigrants fault, why they voted for the right
wing extremists. The first thing they said if we get in parliament we kick
out all the immigrants...”
“Do you think Greece will go back to Drachma?”
“I think this won’t happen. The rest of the European Union won’t
let it happen because it will make them weak. And comparing to the
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situation in the USA – you know I see that people don’t have work, the
rents are still very high. Ok... myself, for example. I like the small things.
This place we’re at now, has a-very cheap beer, very good music. I know I
don’t want to be all day on Facebook on a computer, I want to go outside.
One thing that makes me sad – Greece was one of the most beautiful places
in the world. We have the island, the place for free. We have the sun. The
climate here is so good that even in the heart of winter, where we’re at
would be packed. Greek people have passion – we like to go outside, go
for a walk, hang outside and drink beers and stuff... The sad thing is I see
people about my age that don’t want to make family. They say ‘I live with
my parents, I have my girlfriend, my salary is €500, so is my girlfriends...
we’re going to rent a place, €400, and were going to give €150 for the
phone, internet and electricity. OK we have 350-400 to spend. the super
market the food is so expensive that at the end of the month...’ I see it with
myself, my friends – we don’t even have the money for a beer. We can go
out one time a week. I am romantic about music, I like the big club with
the 400 people that now doesn’t exist because people done have money. I
cant even think spending €40 every Saturday. I like to go out every day,
I’m working tomorrow morning but I will sleep 4 hours and still feel good
because I’m young. But most people are just in their homes, downloading
music, downloading movies. And they are losing their spirit. OK I have the
girl I love, we’ll stay together, but with €1000 as I told you, you cannot
have babies. The way I think is that – you cant afford their protecting. A
friend of mind, his wife gave birth – it costed like €6000 with the hospital!
€6000! You can’t even have a baby, you know! And the sad thing is I see
most of my friends – they are very sad, just in their homes depressed in
front of the PC. They cant live their lives, and this is a very sad thing.
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There’s people thinking ‘OK I will go to another country for a better

future.’ I wouldn’t choose that, I chose my country – I love the place...

***Again bumbling my way from slumber, this time peeling off the plastic
tarp to find several Moroccan scrap cart pushers eyeballing me hungrily.
The alleyway had been compromised, and if I chose to crash there again
I’d no doubt be mugged.
Even if I could hold my own against one of these attrited paupers, I
would no doubt be overwhelmed by a large pack of them. They were
leering like wolves...
There seemed no recourse but to seek a low-key urban camp
location, which I’d been scouting for all along. I had to just take the
financial hit & rent a room. I was never a fan of hostels or the wealthy
child tourists who inhabited them, and to assume a struggling metropolitan
hotel would hook it up on the cheap seemed a fantasy.
But I was dirty and tired, sticky from body sweat. I needed rest,
real rest. For now, the day was about motion. Realizing this was my once
in a lifetime shot to see fragments of the ancient world, I took a bus to the
outskirts of the city where a larger terminal existed. I was told one could
buy passage to any of the ruin attractions within a few hundred miles of
Athens.
Henry Miller had written about Epidaurus, the ancient
amphitheater, as a place of holy quiet. And he’d not only written but ranted
for many, many pages on the topic – screaming at his readers from the
beyond to reach it by any cost as to be born anew.
It seemed a natural place to clear my head. The fancy architecture
of downtown drifted away, peeling back to unveil the real Athens with
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endless one story brick buildings that looked like industrial areas faring
slightly better then Detroit.
Graffiti is universal, and caked everywhere that broken windows
can be found. I started getting nervous, thinking once again I’d be let off
alone in some cursed section of hungry eyes staring down the unknown
contents of my travel pack.
Yet we soon docked into the depot and I was among hundreds of
tourists. Inside the bus station, there were dozens of counters. Every
ancient ruin in the country had it’s own claimed stake from some minor
travel company, nestled in one of many tiny offices.
Wherever you wanted to go, it seemed possible. All it took was
money – the kind of cash the Japanese or French have to toss around. Well,
the round trip bus to Epidaurus was about $40 USA, and another $35 cover
charge to get in, and it was deep in a mountainous desert area with no local
town to walk to except 10 miles away.
I darted around the bus depot seeking out cheaper attractions, but it
was the same tune everywhere. I felt cheated by extreme capitalism, but I
could easily forgive the Greeks. Even their dumpsters were dived clean of
food. So back to the city I went.
I returned to Exarhion Square with it’s semi-Occupy camp & palm
trees & outdoor cafes & hookah bars. It was sunny & packed, young
people everywhere. I sat down on a bench and thought to myself how
badly I wanted to smoke a joint.
Even in this tropical paradise gone economically wrong, I could
not suppress the urge to want much else then to get baked & wander.
Marijuana was anything but legal, and one just did not want to get caught
by the police. The word was they could be easily bribed off, but I didn’t
feel compelled to press my luck.
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Unsure what to do, I opted for Frank Sinatra. I clicked on “My

Kind Of Town;” as the orchestral opening rolled in the wind picked up a
slight breeze. And then, as if a miracle – as if the floating feather from the
intro of Forest Gump – it carried across the cement a gigantic hand cannon
of a rolled blunt to the very edge of my shoe!
I thought it was an unkind mirage. I took a whiff – pure skunk! It
looked as if it had been lit the night before and after one puff tossed away
before a cop walked up on it’s previous owner (who likely lost track of its
location afterwards). But it was mine! All mine!
And so, with Sinatra crooning into my ear lobes, I went for a
nonchalant stroll off the beaten path. I puffed that hoofer down like
Tommy Chong 10 minutes after released from a years-long prison stint.
I was quickly red-eyed and smiling, losing myself in areas far off
the tourist map. How quickly the character of Athens changed. The sun
beating down unmercifully, and the blacktop pavement heat punishing, I
had a revelation of Athens. I thought of all the times I’d dined at Parthenon
Restaurants in Midwest USA, how every time there would be some mural
painting of Greece on the wall. I had hopped into one of them! Genetically
crossed with the most outstandingly dirty Manhattan imagery I could
mentally summon!
It was so gloriously Third World I fell in love with the city all
over. One of the strangest sights was a billboard advertisement, faded from
the sun. It was of a Greek family smiling around their son, who was typing
away at an old block of a computer that must have been one of those
green-screen Apple’s from the 1980‘s.
It was an ad for a computer college that might’ve well been from a
Tim & Eric Awesome Show sketch; something you’d expect to see
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alongside a highway in a snapshot from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or perhaps

even Yemen.
I turned the corner and found black trash bags filled with
hardcover books in the Greek language, many of them on World War II. I
dug through them in splendor before realizing how pointless it was, since I
had no room to carry them, let alone the ability to maintain more weight,
let alone read the indecipherable print.
I made it through more streets, all with that same business
suit/army surplus/hardware store invariance – this time shaken up with
betting parlors and ice cream shops. Everywhere you went, Greeks eating
ice cream! They were people of my heart and temperament. Eventually I
chose one at random and waited in line.
As I was about to order some Rocky Road, the smiling chubby
shopkeeper was diverted from my sale by a breaking news announcement
on the TV’s hung above. The entire shop filled with resting men all looked
to the screens.
A very low-tech new broadcast looking like it was from 1989
appeared, with equally low-tech supers. The anchorman made a speech in
Greek and then the program cut to hand held footage of a highway at night.
In the shaky video, a cop was sitting on his motorcycle. Suddenly, 8 men
blitzkrieg and began beating the shit out of him with wooden lumber 4x4‘s
and tire irons.
They dragged the cop off his chopper and started kicking him on
the ground. One of the attackers, inhumanly energized, sprinted like a
cartoon and catapulted his groin onto the motorcycle as if a super hero. He
kick started it and sped off, stealing the bike while the men continued their
beat down, one guy giving the finger and muttering some kind of Grecian
‘Fuck You’ to the imperiled office.
 110

Then it cut back to the anchor. The entire ice cream shop reacted
ecstatic – they jolted up, laughing & clapping with standing ovations,
laughing like hyenas, high 5-ing each other!
Even the cheery faced fat man behind the counter, with his white
ice cream man’s hat and apron like an illustrated stereotype from a
children’s book, was laughing with a mighty boom!
It took him awhile to regain his composure, turning to me with a
great smile. He handed me a mountain of sugary cold on a pointed cone,
and I sat among the legions of elated giggly pig haters in much welcomed
air conditioning.
Language barriers permitting, some things are just universal.
Everyone gave me a friendly nod as if to say: “the crazy American is one
of us!” As I re-entered the street the fuzzy peak of the weed had tapered
off, and now I was in that slow vacuum that characterizes the end of a
proper stoning.
I never quite wanted to be vanquished from the Athenian sun
bearing down. It pierces the epidermis and pours out the toxins. Only here,
on this stretch of land, was this singular hue of light gracefully arriving like
the unintended slivers of a bereft spotlight. It was as if the soil attracted it
itself, the landscape nursing the sun in reverse like a confused
photosynthesis...
Greece & “The Singularity” were homies. One can only get lost in
a metropolitan labyrinth so much before feeling abandoned by your past
incarnation, who only several hours prior led you off on a wild goose chase
of structural eye candy. If there is no quest sharply influencing one’s
eternal compass, all you eventually become to your self is a foggy notion,
as if a forgotten impulse gone wayward midst foreign buildings.
 111

Thus, I found an internet cafe and arranged the interview with Mr.
Fragos in an hour near the historical museum. It was a needed jolt to return
to my overall mission as to keep the mind clearly pointed.
Well, there I was, on my way to meet Sakis and now descending
an escalator on the fringe of Monastiraki, gliding down to a subterranean
train system.
Admittedly, the entrance to this Metro Station was freaky & grimy.
The iron gate was three-quarters open, looking as if the latch was broken
and the transportation authorities had no money to fix it.
White tiling surrounded it’s edges, nasty with oily finger smudges.
A Romani trio were panhandling on a filthy blanket – the veiled woman
begging and praying, one man passed out and another gazing off emptily
with that hard-boiled “gypsy stare.”
Reaching the lower floors, pale brown floor tiles were massive
squares, flanked by tan walkway tiles. The decor – most likely created in
the 1970‘s – was tacky and deteriorating.
It looked as if the Greeks had modeled their subway line in the
polyester leisure suit era, with mock pillars and sculptured molding like a
fun house of mythological flashiness. They summoned many of the visuals
I’d yet to interconnect – this renovation was all over Athens.
They had built their city to reflect their permanent tourism
economy. But now even these fake ruins were becoming actual ruins – a
living museum caked on top of the ancient one, at every turn symbolizing
the excesses of modern Capitalism which have unfortunately chosen
Greece as the lowest rung of the burden, where the swine avarice of
Modern World has reached and – if we're lucky – becomes another myth
once our current order collapses & regenerates.
 112

One day the humanity of the future well tell their children about
the International Monetary Fund vultures the way we now speak of the
Griffin. The current world is doomed to be a myth. Greece was an
important cradle of civilization, and it is again now too. The ironical end of
our inevitable, penultimate world stock market crash now volleys into
Grecian borders and culture like a spastic shell of aluminum landing from a
mad game of kick the can.
And so, in a story fit for the Old Gods, for Homer, for Seferiadies,
for Plato, for the rest – the fate of the wider world may very well originate
here. If humanity is to rise again, I do believe it resides here, within
Grecian boundaries.
America is no longer the melting pot – it is the silent struggle of
Greece’s soul, it’s raised fist attitude harnessing the quick of life that will
set the example for mankind to come – if he so wishes to surrender the
ignorance of his indifference.
So anyways, blah blah deedle-dum, I hopped onto the red line
Metro and was sped 3 stops away, where the tacky forced architecture
adopted artifacts housed into it’s walls behind enclosed glass. It was
something of a free museum corridor, just to wet your whistle. It opened
up to a high ceiling, blocky area of that tan & brown look, but composed
also of polished marble blocks.
I joined the human traffic stomping up the broken escalator in this
obvious Athenian “rush hour” – men in suits, carrying leather briefcases &
women in skirts looking like subdued, sleepy eyed secretaries shuffling
home to take a nap.
We reached the opening, and again the burning daylight was
before me. It was then, unexpected as a daylight mugging, that I stumbled
onto the most gruesome sight I’d ever witnessed.
 113

Above and beyond its horrific nature, the intertwining atmosphere

in which it bore presence unfurled a symbolism which was blazing. This
fragmented glimpse of life, unfortunately bestowed upon my memory, was
iconic.
Had the wider world access to my haunted recollection, a Pulitzer
would be awarded, instantly, both applauded and acclaimed by the
stupefied academic community. With the human traffic flooding by, heads
down in quietly in silent ignoring, lay a burnt mound of human flesh
somehow still living.
His face only showing a quarter resemblance as to his human
origin, the rest of this obviously once handsome 20something man was
shriveled and distorted such as a raisin. With one arm a nub cut short of the
elbow, and his other a tiny nub, they reached out to me, hauntingly,
desperately, begging for money, for food.
When I looked into his horrid blue eye, I saw the real request of
his mannerism dynamics – from his own personal hell he reached out to
me, begging for death. “Kill me, kill me” was his silent mantra,
unspeakable, his jaw partially removed and tongue most likely gone.
Before him was a filthy hat one might find discarded in a dumpster, frayed
and torn, with maybe .37 odd cents tossed to him.
Flanked by the artistically fake ruins built upon real ruins, the
horror was too much to bare. I looked away (and I am a man who never
looks away). I feel that mankind must never ignore the abyss, never look
away in willful ignorance at the worst elements of human suffering – as to
better deescalate future calamity from the lessons it teaches. Prevent the
catastrophe, and aid the most starving & wounded of earth.
 114

But there was nothing I could do for him. The charms of American
Street World had no relevance to such titanic suffering. What use was a
Free Therapy sign, Sharpie scrawled on cardboard?
There was no program in which to direct him, no knowledge I
could affront. I walked away quickly, just to recoup, promising myself I
would return shortly.
I wanted to do something, anything. I removed my blue suit coat
from the travel pack – something that was luxury weight and took up to
match backpack real estate anyway. At least I could make him feel “fly”,
and get him a cheap swarma.
I smoked a cigarette, wondering how he’d been afflicted with this
cursed fate. Was he a protester caught in the wrong place at the wrong
time? Did wayward petrol smash through his apartment window? Was he
battling riot police and consumed by the “friendly fire” of some desperate,
lunatic anarchist? Some deranged Lone Wolf that acts out of hatred and
retribution alone?
I went back to find the heartbreakingly deformed man. With my
blue suit coat in hand and a smile on my face I turned the corner and found
empty cement. He had vanished as quickly as it was ghostly. I felt awful. I
wanted to help, and was impotent...
Thus, I proceeded to the nearby cafe, where a very business-like
Sakis Fragos was seated outside and having a drink. He was a large-framed
man that looked as if his family belonged to hard weathered fisherman
throughout Greek history.
He had a shaved had and eye glasses, and was obviously quite
intelligent by his demeanor. I slunk into the chair across from the mid-30s
man and ordered a coffee...
 115

“...most bands in Greece live in Athens, come from Athens... The late 80s
early 90s we had a good scene in extreme metal that continues today. I
think the most prominent band is Rotting Christ, since the late 80s, and
they have never stopped. Their career is going up and up, but they’ve
slightly changed their style. Then we have Septic Flesh, which is another
very old band. We have a band called NightFall which used to be more
well known in the past – the first Greek band to sign to a foreign label in
the 90s. These are the triptykon that make Greece’s metal name well
known. FIREWIND is coming now, they are playing power metal different
from the extreme metal bands. The guitarist from Ozzy Osbourne is in this
band. The other band that's really well known these days is Suicidal
Angels, touring with world known thrash bands like Kreator. Good reviews
all over the world. We also have a very strong epic power metal scene; this
kind of music is not big in other countries in the world, except Germany
and Italy. We have many thrash bands and we even create a scene now
with more modern bands. I think in Greece we have a problem of
supporting our bands. I mean most people play and think if the other band
gets good reviews, has bigger live shows its somehow bad for them. It’s
good for them, helps them! Boycotting bands, not supporting, saying bad
things to one another – this is not what should happen. Because we have
some good bands that do not get the exposure they should have, not from
the press but from the people. People don’t give local bands the credit they
really deserve sometimes. The bands, if they release a demo or some stuff
on the internet – its as if they create a band to get some free beers and get
some women... but that's not the main purpose, or the goal. So these are the
things that hold the Greek scene from being better and greater. Greek
people do not trust the bands and the bands don’t always have trust in each
other.”
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“Do most people just fly in for the concerts? I know it is tough to
drive through the Balkans, and the smaller states aren‘t such a huge
payout for even the bigger touring bands, so they stick to more familiar
lucrative territory...”
“Almost all shows are at the center of Athens. 70% come by
airplane, but 30% come with tour bus. But air tickets are not so cheap to
come into Athens. We have very expensive tickets even if you fly from
Sweden. It’s really added in the cost of a live show. The venues are
sometimes very expensive to be rented – €3000 is lots of money. We have
very strict laws; the taxes are very high for a live show, especially with a
foreign band. We have laws that are 100 years old. We pay everything –
the rights of musicians taxes to the state its like 13%.”
“Does this come from antiquated laws of dealing with traditional
symphonies?"
“It’s a very strange law that you have to pay in the city of Athens –
you have to pay a tax because you are holding a concert. It’s called
something like... even if it s a theatrical play you have to pay the state 6 or
7% of a ticket. This means the state is your partner – almost 20% of each
ticket. So you also have to pay the band, the owner, the rent, the back line.
This is why shows are expensive here and most of them are over €25.
People cannot afford €30 for one club show, but it cannot be done another
way. Too many taxes, too expensive venues, too expensive flights, bands
want more &more. They cannot earn money from the sales and they get it
from the merchandise. They cannot understand the situation we are in and
they will not agree to take less money. We have many people doing
concerts and the price gets higher and higher and they bid on it.”
“Does Thessaloníki have the same laws?”
 117

“Yes it’s the same thing, but the expectancy and fees are lower.
But they have the same problem – and not too many people to attend
because of the crisis.”
“You’ve met tons of musicians in your career...”
“It’s always interesting when you meet your idols. It’s always...
interesting. However it's also interesting to see people are not the way you
have imagined. So I do not want to say names, but I’ve met some people
and I didn’t want to listen to their music anymore.”
“Who were you not disappointed by?"
"I think that Ronnie James Dio was a person that was so humble
and kind, and treated people as special human beings. I think he was a very
gifted man.”
“What were some of the best interviews you ever did?"
“The best? I could tell you some of the worst. #1 is the late Chuck
Schuldiner of Death. I’m a big fan of his music. The only thing I could
say... This interview was surely done many years ago, the late 90s. This
guy had an obsession that people... he had a persecution mania. He had an
obsession that people were after him and wanted him to fail. And
whenever you asked question about his former members, he didn’t like
that. The magazine i used to work back then called Metal Invader – another
guy was asking him about his former members. And Chuck hung up the
phone. This guy that did the interview was the one who had arranged for
him to come to Athens for the one and only time. He was the one who
literally arranged the show of Death and he got told that if Chuck saw him,
from the stage – because he knew him, personally – then he would go off
the stage and cancel the show. So when I did the interview after, he was
preoccupied against me and the media I was working for. He was
expecting questions about his behavior but I didn’t ask him, because I
 118

knew that. So the last question was about the former members – he and his
tour manager stop the tape recorder and said ‘I won’t be answering these
kind of silly questions, that's what you do,’ and he was selling somethings.
And I told him – ‘That’s what I wanted to see – I wanted to see myself
what a big asshole you are.’ And unfortunately I was right. And he stood
and thought for a second and told me: 'Okay you’re right, you’re right –
let’s answer this question.’ And now I didn’t want an answer, I just wanted
to see your attitude. And again, I’m telling you I love his music... Another
one was Zack Wylde. This was 6 or 7 years ago. He’s so ‘American Guy.’
He was burping, he was saying fuck every three words. Look it’s his
opinion, but its always something – I love his music, but let’s not talk
about history and America and all this stuff. We wont be pro American or
pro Greek, or what have you... Another person, Dave Mustaine – he’s a
fantastic person to do an interview because you don’t know how he’s going
to react to anything. I’ve done face to face and phone interviews, and i
never know if he’s going to hang up because of the questions. I was kind of
afraid the first time when I was younger, but the next i was laughing and
saying It’s OK, he’s a kind of person – you cannot expect anything from
him. He could be laughing – he has this enigmatic face. You get this ironic
face that you cannot judge if he’s laughing, angry, if he’s going to hit you
in the face. And i really like these kind of persons. Anytime you interview
Mustaine it’s a challenge.”
“Well, about the crisis..."
“Right now... the European union has imposed some very strict
measures on the Greek people that they simply cannot afford to live with.
What can you do when you lose 40% of your salary? You have created a
life where you must do everything with a small mound of money every
month. When you are a civil servant you cannot lose your job. So when
 119

you have a 40% reduction on your state, even on your pension – how can
an aged man or woman live with €300 a month? How could it be? I am 38
years old and most my friends live with €700 a month. You simply cannot
live with this money. The unemployment percentage is 25%. 1 out of 4
does not have a job, and the other 3/4 might work part time. This affects
everything. Our fellows in Europe have not understood that. It’s not the
people from Greece that have taken this money – it’s politicians and the
politicians will not get this money from the rich people because they
support them. They take it from middle class. Now there is only rich and
poor, and it is a plan to destroy Greece. And what have we done so wrong?
In Germany there is a wave of people saying: ‘fuck Greece, they are
stealing money, they are liars.’ Well, you know, these people, Germany,
some decades ago, destroyed Greece completely, and we got nothing from
them. And we didn’t ask for them, for this money, and we tried to rebuild
Greece from what they had done to us with our own money. Why are these
German people so fierce? that's the sense of the European union to help
each other,m not sink the country. just try to help. and now we have some
politicians that do whatever some strong people say to them to do, they get
elected and they do the opposite thing they promised the people. you
simply cannot imagine what kind of extra taxes we are paying the last
couple of years. we pay for the house we live, the house we rent, the
electricity bill. you pay tax for everything you have and extra taxes for
your job, because you have a company, because you drink beer. whatever
you earn you just give to the state in form of extra taxes.”
“Sounds like Michigan... is health care gone too? can you get a
second job?"
“You get €500 for a full time job. You could get a part time job,
but if you are a civil servant, you are not allowed to do that. You get €700.
 120

Because if you work for the state the law is that you work for the state you
will not lose your job therefore you do not need to work somewhere else.
This time they have said they will fire some people, some civil servants,
reduced their salaries 30-40% and say you cannot have a second job. The
thing is you cannot find a second job. We have so many fired people, so
many shops closed, you simply cannot understand if you do not live here.
Some legendary market streets in Athens have shops that are up for rent. A
few years ago you could never imagine the possibility of closing a shop in
this place. It can't even be rented! No one wants it. If they start a business
they will lose it all.”
“Are people moving to other countries in large numbers?"
“Yeah, yeah. Today my wife's brother left to the United States
with his family forever. Both our lawyers – a very good job – and they lost
4/5th of their income. People could not afford to pay them. There are so
many law cases that are being solved in up to 5 years times. Every day you
always have strikes – the lawyers, every month. In Germany the
immigrants are unwanted. In many cases I hear they go to Germany to find
a job like in the late 60s or 70s. And then they get back with some money
they had. They went to Germany and they could not even find a house to
rent because they wouldn’t rent it to them because they are form Greece.
That’s racist.”
“What was the last big protest?”
“The riots are not only form people that are protesting – they are
people from the state, the government, the police creating riots to
disorientate the media and public opinion.”
“Provocateurs?"
 121

“Every time! When someone tried to step towards parliament they

throw chemicals and tear gas, all this stuff, and they create riots, even in
the metro stations they throw tear gas. People cannot breathe.”
“When was the first big protest?”
“December 2009. A policeman killed a young guy that was
protesting and I hadn’t seen such riots in my whole life. I mean, you see
the city center of Athens, and almost half the shops had broken glasses.
The post office was burned. All the banks were burned, all the banks. I can
see thousands of cars were burned. I even stepped out the house to see
what was happening and parked my car in a basement lot – I wasn’t
allowed to do that but I needed to save it. Everything was burning... it was
something you had to see. Most people had left to their houses to go to
hotels to sleep because the tear gases went into their homes. If you walked
outside it wouldn’t be possible without protection. From this time \on
we’ve been having 3 or 4 very strong riots, but nothing was compared to
that – nothing. Last summer my wife was pregnant and over here, working,
and there were some riots in city centre. I immediately came to take her
home and was were seeing policeman with wooden sticks hitting tourists,
as if they were protesters. This place! This is The Acropolis museum! For
gods sake this is the tourist place of Athens, and there were policeman on
motorcycles hitting with wooden sticks even tourists. They didn’t care!
They even hit people outside the Athens museum. They are even hitting
people that earn the same money as them, have the same problem as them
and they act as if they are the enemies... Now we have no politicians who
can walk alone. We were having many attacks, people hitting them with
eggs and yogurts. If they go to a restaurant for example, and get seen. Like
the former minister of economics. He stated a lot in his interviews that he
cannot have a cup of coffee with his wife. Of course! Because you’re an
 122

asshole! You’ve sunk the country! I mean, why can you have – I cannot
have a cup of coffee because I cannot afford it. Why should you have a cup
of coffee with your wife? You don’t deserve it...”

***Back to Syntagma and then Monastiraki I went, again filling my belly

with cheap swarma until the stomach poked the spine out of place. It felt so
good to hurt as such.
I recalled my alleyway sleeping quarters had been compromised
earlier, and thought this would be a good occasion to seek out the cheapest
hotel room I could find. I wanted to, if only for the experience.
The Hotel Exarhion across from the main square and it’s motley
assemblage of rebels was perfectly accommodating. The room was €30.
The Old Man at the front desk refused my payment – he whipped out a
gigantic book where you sign yourself in old school style like an official
log.
Yes, he could take my money, as it was explained, but that's the
way they do it there – you pay in the morning. It’s an honor system
approach. Your hand is shaken like a man and as a man with respect to the
other man you get your man room to unfurl your tools, suits & army
surplus gear like an ever-upgrading prepper midst this permanent financial
doomsday.
The room felt very Turkish; everything was orange and white. The
doors felt thin and the rug was a very 70‘s brown. I had a balcony with
which to watch the square from above. After a shower and a nap, I turned
on the TV. Random Greek-language music stations and low-tech public
access looking stuff.
Every TV channel of course had its own Greek oriented broadcast.
I finally stumbled onto Men In Black with subtitles, oddly watching the
 123

film from the aliens perspectives and not the protagonists. The sunset after
it’s ripe red glow off the dresser and I head to Exarhion at night. It had the
vibe of a Friday night party on the dark side of a bridge, getting rowdy and
avoiding patrolling cops.
Tons of people were out, the clubs roaring. One street dweller
approached me, trying to do that “cool guy helping out the tourist” shtick
to get a few beers out of me. I knew his game and did not care – I just liked
the fellows style. He had a light blue silk shirt & straw fedora. We talked
about other areas of the city as he split a finely rolled joint – provided I buy
him another beer.
Homeboy bounced, and after silently watching the action for an
hour, I slipped back into my hotel room. I was lonely, certainly, but I was
grizzled from travel. I felt amnesic yet electrified, exhausted and in no
shape to hold a conversation with some spontaneous bar date below.
Greece was busy speaking to me, and I couldn’t mute it’s tirade.
None of these tourist people would continue speaking with me if I
told them I flew in to sleep in alleys with Moroccan scarp dealers? I got's
game, ya know, but what works among my own twisted brood is inclined
to shock them, most often intentionally.
From the balcony the stars were a powerhouse, and the roofs of the
other high rise buildings cut across the horizon like a CGI rendered
silhouette. Every iota of this image within my recollection is graced. I felt,
for once, that I was exactly where I was supposed to be – even if simply a
third world hotel room...

I woke up naked with little ants crawling all over me. At first I thought
they were bedbugs and panicked. When I realized they were normal, I gave
 124

up and drifted back to sleep, letting my friends explore my epidermis

terrain.
I soon took a shower, blasted all my socks with the bathroom sink,
and dried them on the sunny balcony before my departure. Life was
bustling down in Exarhion Square.
I walked down the long marble staircase and signed out in the big
book, gladly paying the old hotel proprietor. After yet another swarma
lunch, I struck up a conversation with a young painter named Alex. Getting
filled in on the enigmatic blanks I had on Greek politics was quite a lesson.
He’d lived in Barcelona for a year and just returned, renting a studio
overlooking Exarhion.
He took me to his creative work space and spared no venom
toward the vultures that dismantled his country. We smoked some fine
hashish-laced herb with me as he explained that all Greek politicians had to
have bodyguard at all times and could not enter public or they would be
attacked.
And no Greeks even wanted to accept their business as a matter of
national dignity. Their entire bureaucratic class were protected by
bodyguard Mercenaries, ex-Iranian Republican Guards and the like. No
Greek would protect them!
I thought the country had swung to the left following the
international nervousness throughout the EU when members of The
Golden Dawn were swept into office in a streak of unsuspected victories.
Greeks were voting in Neo-Fascists marching with torches? Then handing
it to the left wing Socialists in the next elections??
NO – the reality of it was like a terrible in-joke, the primordial
belly-laughing madness at the foot of the derangement colossus. Earlier
 125

Nikos mentioned it briefly – what was really going on was politicians had
cut the “red tape” so people could now bet on political elections!
The Greeks were using social media to conspiratorially rig the
election as a nationwide effort to favor the highest point spread pay-out on
the betting board! The Nazis had a +12 handicap being the underdogs, so
the payout was 12 fold!!
Everyone banked – and they weren’t too worried about The
Golden Dawn anyway because they’d just vote them out of power in the
next nationally-rigged sweep! It had now gone on like this for years – the
country literally betting away their future on whatever fringe party popped
up! It was absurd!

Another day before I left for Milan, again to sleep on the streets. The day
passed dreamily; I went for a long walk, drifting bereft businesses.
Everything was dirt cheap, everywhere.
I’d gotten a little lost & popped my head into a book store for
directions. The lone man behind the counter – with his shiny bald block of
a head, set down what he was reading.
With a booming, epic voice he gave directions. Whoever this guy
was, he spoke with such power as I have never experienced elsewhere. The
ground shook. Staring back at me, I froze like an animal in headlights. I
thanked him after moments of staring blankly, and he slowly picked back
up his book.
Soon I met the guitarist from After Dusk – a classic power metal
vs melodic death act – for an exclusive interview for MetalRules.com
(*Google it if you wish to read it!). We had a good discussion regarding
the Athens metal scene & After Dusk's latest record “The Devil Got His
Soul.”
 126

Afterwards, I just kept walking. By nightfall, I was determined to

wander The Acropolis before heading off into the seedier bars. I was off
the “metal work time clock” and no longer needed to write about it some
day in the future. This would be a night just for me.
But first I wanted to find “The Burned Man.” I set out to the metro
station he haunted yesterday, but was nowhere. I looked all over – he’d
vanished. Whoever he was, he'd stalk my memory for life. I saw in his
figure the lowest rungs of suffering the homeless can endure, and it made
my empathy grow boundlessly to the plight of the displaced.
I tried giving my suit coat to another homeless man with one arm,
but he wasn't interested. Eventually I took a trip to the €1 store to gather
items. The metro it was located at was a sparse one, with plenty of land to
sprawl out like a public park. At it’s most comfortable looking edge lay a
purple lotus tree.
I spread the suit coat beneath me like a blanket & stretched out
beneath the sky which soon turned a dark purple into a solid night. The
stars were brighter from this iota of earth then in the whole of Texas.
Nowhere else on Earth did I feel the constellations were as dignified.
I'd soon make my way to the ruins of The Acropolis, just to get
my own nocturnal tour apart from any tourist chatter, and then off to who
knows where. But that, my friends, is all for the deep well of personal
experience. εμπρός , προς τα εμπρός , και ποτέ δεν υποχωρώ...
127
 128

…also by Ryan Bartek…

:: Books ::
“Anticlimax Leviathan"
“The Big Shiny Prison (Volume One)”
“Fortress Europe (BSP Vol. II)"
"Return To Fortress Europe (BSP Vol III)"
“To Live & Die On Zug Island” (*Unreleased)
“The Silent Burning” (2005; Out of Print)

:: Records ::
Vulture Locust "Command Presence"
A.K.A. MABUS “Lord of The Black Sheep”
Sasquatch Agnostic “Complete Mammalography”
The REAL Man In Black “GhostNomad Lives”
 129

Ryan Bartek is a writer & musician from Detroit (MI) now

living in Portland (OR). He is author of 6 books:
“Anticlimax Leviathan,” “The Big Shiny Prison (Volume
One),” “Fortress Europe (The Big Shiny Prison Vol. II),”
“Return To Fortress Europe (BSP Vol. III),” “The Silent
Burning,” and “To Live & Die On Zug Island”

Bartek is guitarist/vocalist of the extreme metal act

SKULLMASTER and performs acoustic/antifolk as
“The Real Man In Black.” He also does spoken word as
his regular old self. LURKING STRANGERS, his freakish
new punk rock band, will be debuting 2018.

Past musical credits include the savage grindcore bands

VULTURE LOCUST & SASQUATCH AGNOSTIC, as
well as Detroit's infamous grindfreaks A.K.A. MABUS.

Known for his journalism in the metal/punk undergrounds

due to his counterculture travel books and long-term
output for mass-market magazines, high-traffic webzines
& respected print fanzines, R. Bartek is also the shadowy
figure behind the press relations firm Anomie PR,
servicing thousands of media outlets globally.

All albums & books have been released under Anomie

INC / Anomie Press, as FREE digital downloads.

R. Bartek’s book collection & music discography 100% FREE

www.BigShinyPrison.com
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